This part was the most severe test of his composure, for he had fashioned it almost in detail upon that idyll in a canyon. There were even speeches of Joan's that he had used. To sit here and watch Joan herself go through it, while he looked on, was an exciting form of torment. The setting was different, tropical instead of Northern, and the half-native heroine was more passionate, more emotional, more animal than Joan. Nevertheless, the drama was a repetition. As Prosper had laid his trap for Joan, silently, subtly undermining her whole mental structure, using her loneliness, playing upon the artist soul of her, so did this Englishman lay his trap for Zona. He was more cruel than Prosper, rougher, necessarily more dramatic, but there was all the essence of the original drama, the ensnarement of a simple, direct mind by a complex and skillful one. Joan's surrender, Prosper's victory, were there. He wondered how Joan could act it, play the part in cold blood. Now he was condemned to live in his own imagination through Joan's tragedy. There was that first pitifulness of a tamed and broken spirit; then later, in London, the agony of loneliness, of separation, of gradual awakening to the change in her master's heart. Prosper had written the words, but it was Joan who, with her voice, the music of memory-shaken heart-strings, made the words alive and meaningful. Others in the audience might wonder over the girl's ability to interpret this unusual experience, to make it natural, human, inevitable. But Prosper did not wonder. He knew that simply she forced herself to re-live this most painful part of her own life and to re-live it articulately. What, in God's name, had induced her to do it? Necessity? Poverty? Morena? All at once he remembered Betty's belief, that Joan was the manager's mistress--his wild, beautiful Joan, Joan the creation of his own wizardry. This thought gave him such pain that he whitened. "Prosper," murmured Betty, "you must tell me what is wrong. Evidently your nerves are in bad shape. Is the excitement too much for you?" "I believe it is," he said, avoiding her eyes and moving stiff, white lips; "I've never seen such acting. I--I--Morena says he'll let me see her in her dressing-room afterwards. You see, Betty, I'm badly shaken up." "Ye-es," drawled Betty, and looked at him through narrowed lids, and she sat with this look on her face and with her fingers locked, when Prosper, not giving her further notice, followed Morena out. "Jasper,"--Prosper held his friend back in the middle of a passage that led to the dressing-rooms,--"I want very particularly to see Miss West alone. I am very much moved by her performance and I want to tell her so. Also, I want her to express herself naturally with no idea of my being the author of the play and without the presence of her manager. Will you just ask if she will see a friend of yours--alone?" Jasper smiled his subtle smile. "Of course, Prosper. It's all as clear as daylight."