Read Somewhere in Time for Free Online Page A

biography-like a starving man who cannot derive satisfaction from hors d'ouevres but craves to reach the main course.
    I'll force myself to slow down.
    � � �
    The next book is Well-known Actors and Actresses, published in 1903. The section opens "Elise McKenna sells wood, pigs, and poultry" and goes on to state that she cares more for her farm at Ronkonkoma, Long Island, than for anything else but the stage. If she weren't an actress, the section continues, she would be a farmer. Every moment she can spare from the theater is spent in retreat at her two-hundred-acre farm, her private railroad car carrying her there whenever she has time. "There she can roam around at will, away from curiosity seekers." Always that seclusion.
    More on that. "Less is known of her personally than any other prominent person on the stage. To the majority of people, their knowledge of her stops at the footlights. To preserve this privacy, she has placed everything pertaining to publication about her in the hands of her manager. If a writer applies for an interview, she refers him to Mr. Robinson, who straightway says 'No,' this partly from regard for her own desire for privacy, partly from a well-defined policy which he adopted as soon as he became her manager about ten years ago."
    Which seems to verify my view of him.
    � � �
    Here's a contradiction. Research always turns them up, I guess. "She has never missed a performance because of illness and never has failed to appear as billed save on one occasion, in 1896, when the train in which she and her company were traveling from San Diego to Denver was stalled in a blizzard." 1896 again.
    � � �
    Here is a lovely photograph of her. She's wearing a black coat and black gloves and what seems to be a black bow tie. Her long hair is pinned up with combs and she's resting her clasped hands on a column top. She looks exquisite and I'm falling in love with her all over again, experiencing the same sensation I had when I first saw that photograph in the Hall of History. Caught up in research, one begins to lose emotional involvement. Now I see this photograph and the emotion has returned. Insane or not, unrealistic though it be, I'm in love with Elise McKenna. And I don't believe it's going to end.
    � � �
    A last-but telling-quote.
    "There was a man who was greatly attracted to Miss McKenna (in 1898) and paid her much attention, escorting her and her mother to the theatre and back every night. When matters had gone along awhile, Mrs. McKenna took an opportunity to say to him, 'It's only fair to you that I should tell you you are wasting your time. Elise will never marry. She is too devoted to her art ever to think of such a thing.'
    Why should I disbelieve that? Yet I do. I think, in reaction, of Nat Goodwin's words.
    Is there a solution to the mystery of Elise McKenna?
    � � �
    I shudder again. So soon to the last book. One last mental meal and then starvation. The prospect frightens me.
    � � �
    No Mahler now. I want to concentrate entirely on this book, her biography.
    A frontispiece photograph of her, taken in 1909. It looks like a picture taken at a seance; that of a young woman looking at the camera from another world. She seems, at first glance, to be smiling. Then you see that it could, also, be a look of pain.
    Again, Nat Goodwin's observation comes to mind.
    � � �
    "Never," writes the author in the first lines of her book, "was there an actress whose personality was more elusive than Elise McKenna's."
    Agreed.
    Here's the first description of her in any detail: "A graceful figure with gold-brown hair, deep-set eyes of greyish green and delicate high cheekbones."
    � � �
    A quotation from her first, notable review in 1890. "Elise McKenna is as pretty a soubrette as one can see in an afternoon promenade-a sweet and tender blossom on the dramatic tree."
    � � �
    Don't skip so much! Dictate every pertinent fact. This is the last book, Collier!
    Oh, God,