第255章

The rest of these women are doomed for life to commonplace obscurity.You----"We'll see your name in letters of fire on the Broadway temples of fame.""I know you're half laughing at me," said Susan."But I feel a little better.""Then I'm accomplishing my object.Let's not think about ourselves.That makes life narrow.Let's keep the thoughts on our work--on the big splendid dreams that come to us and invite us to labor and to dare."And as they lingered over the satisfactory dinner he had ordered, they talked of acting--of the different roles of "Cavalleria" as types of fundamental instincts and actions--of how best to express those meanings--how to fill out the skeletons of the dramatist into personalities actual and vivid.Susan forgot where she was, forgot to be reserved with him.In her and Rod's happiest days she had never been free from the constraint of his and her own sense of his great superiority.With Brent, such trifles of the petty personal disappeared.And she talked more naturally than she had since a girl at her uncle's at Sutherland.She was amazed by the fountain that had suddenly gushed forth in her mind at the conjuring of Brent's sympathy.She did not recognize herself in this person so open to ideas, so eager to learn, so clear in the expression of her thoughts.Not since the Burlingham days had she spent so long a time with a man in absolute unconsciousness of sex.

They were interrupted by the intrusion of a fashionable young man with the expression of assurance which comes from the possession of wealth and the knowledge that money will buy practically everything and everybody.Brent received him so coldly that, after a smooth sentence or two, he took himself off stammering and in confusion."I suppose," said Brent when he was gone, "that young ass hoped I would introduce him to you and invite him to sit.But you'll be tempted often enough in the next few years by rich men without my helping to put temptation in your way,""I've never been troubled thus far," laughed Susan.

"But you will, now.You have developed to the point where everyone will soon be seeing what it took expert eyes to see heretofore.""If I am tempted," said Susan, "do you think I'll be able to resist?""I don't know," confessed Brent."You have a strong sense of honesty, and that'll keep you at work with me for a while.

Then----

"If you have it in you to be great, you'll go on.If you're merely the ordinary woman, a little more intelligent, you'll probably--sell out.All the advice I have to offer is, don't sell cheap.As you're not hampered by respectability or by inexperience, you needn't." He reflected a moment, then added, "And if you ever do decide that you don't care to go on with a career, tell me frankly.I may be able to help you in the other direction.""Thank you," said Susan, her strange eyes fixed upon him.

"Why do you put so much gratitude in your tone and in your eyes?" asked he.

"I didn't put it there," she answered."It--just came.And I was grateful because--well, I'm human, you know, and it was good to feel--that--that----""Go on," said he, as she hesitated.

"I'm afraid you'll misunderstand."

"What does it matter, if I do?"

"Well--you've acted toward me as if I were a mere machine that you were experimenting with.""And so you are."

"I understand that.But when you offered to help me, if Ihappened to want to do something different from what you want me to do, it made me feel that you thought of me as a human being, too."The expression of his unseeing eyes puzzled her.She became much embarrassed when he said, "Are you dissatisfied with Spenser? Do you want to change lovers? Are you revolving me as a possibility?""I haven't forgotten what you said," she protested.

"But a few words from me wouldn't change you from a woman into a sexless ambition."An expression of wistful sadness crept into the violet-gray eyes, in contrast to the bravely smiling lips.She was thinking of her birth that had condemned her to that farmer Ferguson, full as much as of the life of the streets, when she said:

"I know that a man like you wouldn't care for a woman of my sort.""If I were you," said he gently, "I'd not say those things about myself.Saying them encourages you to think them.And thinking them gives you a false point of view.You must learn to appreciate that you're not a sheltered woman, with reputation for virtue as your one asset, the thing that'll enable you to get some man to undertake your support.You are dealing with the world as a man deals with it.You must demand and insist that the world deal with you on that basis." There came a wonderful look of courage and hope into the eyes of Lorella's daughter.

"And the world will," he went on."At least, the only part of it that's important to you--or really important in any way.

The matter of your virtue or lack of it is of no more importance than is my virtue or lack of it.""Do you _really_ believe that way?" asked Susan, earnestly.