He leaned back in his chair and looked at her through a cloud of smoke.She saw that his eyes were not gray, as she had thought, but brown, a hazel brown with points of light sparkling in the irises and taking away all the suggestion of weakness and sentimentality that makes pure brown eyes unsatisfactory in a man.He said slowly:
"When I saw you--in the Martin--you were on the way down.You went, I see."She nodded."I'm still there."
"You like it? You wish to stay?"
She shook her head smilingly."No, but I can stay if it's necessary.I've discovered that I've got the health and the nerves for anything.""That's a great discovery....Well, you'll soon be on your way up....Do you wish to know why I spoke to you this morning?--Why I remembered you?""Why?"
"Because of the expression of your eyes--when your face is in repose."She felt no shyness--and no sense of necessity of responding to a compliment, for his tone forbade any thought of flattery.
She lowered her gaze to conceal the thoughts his words brought--the memories of the things that had caused her eyes to look as Rod and now Brent said.
"Such an expression," the playwright went on, "must mean character.I am sick and tired of the vanity of these actresses who can act just enough never to be able to learn to act well.I'm going to try an experiment with you.I've tried it several times but--No matter.I'm not discouraged.
I never give up....Can you stand being alone?""I spend most of my time alone.I prefer it.""I thought so.Yes--you'll do.Only the few who can stand being alone ever get anywhere.Everything worth while is done alone.The big battle--it isn't fought in the field, but by the man sitting alone in his tent, working it all out.The bridge--the tunnel through the great mountains--the railway--the huge business enterprise--all done by the man alone, thinking, plotting to the last detail.It's the same way with the novel, the picture, the statue, the play--writing it, acting it--all done by someone alone, shut in with his imagination and his tools.I saw that you were one of the lonely ones.All you need is a chance.You'd surely get it, sooner or later.Perhaps I can bring it a little sooner....
How much do you need to live on?"
"I must have fifty dollars a week--if I go on at--as I am now.
If you wish to take all my time--then, forty."He smiled in a puzzled way.
"The police," she explained."I need ten----""Certainly--certainly," cried he."I understand--perfectly.
How stupid of me! I'll want all your time.So it's to be forty dollars a week.When can you begin?"Susan reflected."I can't go into anything that'll mean a long time," she said."I'm waiting for a man--a friend of mine to get well.Then we're going to do something together."Brent made an impatient gesture."An actor? Well, I suppose I can get him something to do.But I don't want you to be under the influence of any of these absurd creatures who think they know what acting is--when they merely know how to dress themselves in different suits of clothes, and strut themselves about the stage.They'd rather die than give up their own feeble, foolish little identities.I'll see that your actor friend is taken care of, but you must keep away from him--for the time at least.""He's all I've got.He's an old friend."
"You--care for him?"
"I used to.And lately I found him again--after we had been separated a long time.We're going to help each other up.""Oh--he's down and out oh? Why?"
"Drink--and hard luck."
"Not hard luck.That helps a man.It has helped you.It has made you what you are.""What am I?" asked Susan.
Brent smiled mysteriously."That's what we're going to find out," said he."There's no human being who has ever had a future unless he or she had a past--and the severer the past the more splendid the future."Susan was attending with all her senses.This man was putting into words her own inarticulate instincts.
"A past," he went on in his sharp, dogmatic way, "either breaks or makes.You go into the crucible a mere ore, a possibility.You come out slag or steel." He was standing now, looking down at her with quizzical eyes."You're about due to leave the pot," said he.
"And I've hopes that you're steel.If not----" He shrugged his shoulders--"You'll have had forty a week for your time, and I'll have gained useful experience."Susan gazed at him as if she doubted her eyes and ears.
"What do you want me to do?" she presently inquired.
"Learn the art of acting--which consists of two parts.First, you must learn to act--thousands of the profession do that.
Second, you must learn not to act--and so far I know there aren't a dozen in the whole world who've got that far along.
I've written a play I think well of.I want to have it done properly--it, and several other plays I intend to write.I'm going to give you a chance to become famous--better still, great."Susan looked at him incredulously."Do you know who I am?"she asked at last.
"Certainly."
Her eyes lowered, the faintest tinge of red changed the amber-white pallor of her cheeks, her bosom rose and fell quickly.
"I don't mean," he went on, "that I know any of the details of your experience.I only know the results as they are written in your face.The details are unimportant.When I say I know who you are, I mean I know that you are a woman who has suffered, whose heart has been broken by suffering, but not her spirit.Of where you came from or how you've lived, Iknow nothing.And it's none of my business--no more than it's the public's business where __I__ came from and how I've learned to write plays."Well, whether he was guessing any part of the truth or all of it, certainly what she had said about the police and now this sweeping statement of his attitude toward her freed her of the necessity of disclosing herself.She eagerly tried to dismiss the thoughts that had been making her most uneasy.She said:
"You think I can learn to act?"
