"Late the next afternoon I reached Danube, and was driven directly to the theatre--which was new. There was a pang in this. The town seemed just the same; the streets and buildings, the sounds and smells, even the sunset patch at the head of Main Street--all were just as they should be, except the theatre. You see, all the dreams of greatness of that savage, homely girl, had found their source and culmination in the old house of melodrama, parts of which, they told me, now were made over into darkey shanties down by the river. I felt that my success was qualified a little in that it had not come in the life of the old house. "I joined the Company at the theatre, without seeing any of the Danube folk. The audience was already gathering. Through an eyelet of the curtain, I saw Calhoun Knox enter alone, and take a seat in the centre, five rows from the orchestra. He seemed smaller. The good brown tan was gone. There was a twitch about his mouth that twitched mine. Other faces were the same--even the lips that had spoken my doom so long ago. I had no hate for them now.... "I looked at Calhoun Knox again, looked for the charm of clean simplicity, and kept putting Stephen Cabot out of my heart and brain.... This man before me had fought for me twice, when I had needed a champion.... They pulled me away from the eyelet, and _The Thing_ was on. "I could feel the town's group-soul that night--responded to its every thought, as if a nerve-system of my own was installed in every mind. They were listening to the woman who had startled New York. I felt their awe. It was not sweet, as I had dreamed the moment would be. After all, these were my people. "I wanted their love, not their adulation. There had been nights back in the East, when I had felt my audience, and turned loose _The Thing_ with utmost daring, knowing that enough of the throng could follow me. But this night I played slowly, played down, so that all could get it. This was not a concession to the public, but a reconciliation. And at the last, I moved and spoke pityingly, lest I hurt them; played to the working face of Calhoun Knox with all its limitations--as you would tell a story to a child, and hasten the happy ending to steady the quivering lip.... And then it came to me slowly, after the last curtain had fallen, that Danube was calling for its own, and I stepped out from behind. "'Once in the days of tumult and misunderstanding,' I told them, 'I was angry because you did not love me. Now I know that I was not lovable. And now I feel your goodness and your forgiveness. I pray you not to thank me any more, lest I break down under too much joy....' Then I went down among them. A woman kissed me, but the moment was so big and my eyes so clouded that I did not remember the face.... Presently the real consciousness came. Danube had dropped back to the doors. My hand was in the hand of Calhoun Knox.