Summary
A prairie wind, smelling of ironweed and Methodist hymnals, whips through the sagging porch where Alice Avery—her mother’s theatrical blood roaring beneath calico—learns to mute her pulse to Aunt Jane’s Sabbath scowl. The girl’s dreams arrive in saturated pigments: a scarlet curtain, a gas-jet halo, a stranger’s hand offering not a ring but a palette-knife. When Richard Danforth—city-boned, paint beneath every fingernail—steps off the dust-coated train, the town’s ochre horizon tilts; suddenly the grain elevator becomes a proscenium arch and the cicadas a house orchestra. Their first conversation is a duet of glances across the dry-goods counter: he sees a face that might launch a thousand sketches, she sees an exit. Promises scrawled on the back of a torn life-drawing send her hurtling toward a Manhattan that greets her with nickel glare and elbows sharper than any aunt’s tongue. Richard, cornered by his own careless chivalry, dispatches Sarah—Alice’s former nurse, now a benevolent spy—to chaperone the chaos. In the cobalt dusk of his studio, turpentine and tuberoses mingle while Nancy Arnold—languid, predatory, paint on her cheek like war-ochre—stakes her claim. Jealousy ricochets: canvas against corset, palette against pride. One slammed door later, Alice vanishes into the city’s arterial neon, trading her name for bill-top billing and learning that footlights burn like absolution. Years compress into a single spotlight; Richard, haunted by every unfinished portrait, finds her again in the hush after a triumph—applause still crackling like pine logs—and this time offers not rescue but partnership. She exits stage left, wedding veil substituting for curtain, the roar of the crowd swapped for the hush of shared breath.
Synopsis
Alice Avery, the orphaned daughter of an actress, is raised to adulthood in a small town by her strict Aunt Jane and Uncle Ezra. When artist Richard Danforth comes to town to rest, Alice falls in love with him. When he leaves, he promises that if Alice comes to New York he will care for her, so Alice decides to follow him there over the objections of her aunt and uncle, who want her to marry a local boy. In New York, Richard is surprised by her appearance and sends for Sarah, Alice's childhood guardian, to look after her. Nancy Arnold, one of Richard's models, is in love with him and jealous of Alice, and Alice is jealous of her. When Alice interrupts a quarrel between Richard and Nancy over her, she decides to run away and get a job on the stage. She becomes a famous actress and eventually is found by Richard, who realizes that he is in love with her. She then gives up the stage to become his wife.
