SPENSER had time and thought for his play only.He no longer tormented himself with jealousy of the abilities and income and fame of Brent and the other successful writers for the stage; was not he about to equal them, probably to surpass them? As a rule, none of the mean emotions is able to thrive--unless it has the noxious vapors from disappointment and failure to feed upon.Spenser, in spirits and in hope again, was content with himself.Jealousy of Brent about Susan had been born of dissatisfaction with himself as a failure and envy of Brent as a success; it died with that dissatisfaction and that envy.His vanity assured him that while there might be possibly--ways in which he was not without rivals, certainly where women were concerned he simply could not be equaled; the woman he wanted he could have--and he could hold her as long as he wished.The idea that Susan would give a sentimental thought to a man "old enough to be her father"--Brent was forty-one--was too preposterous to present itself to his mind.She loved the handsome, fascinating, youthful Roderick Spenser; she would soon be crazy about him.
Rarely does it occur to a man to wonder what a woman is thinking.During courtship very young men attribute intellect and qualities of mystery and awe to the woman they love.But after men get an insight into the mind of woman and discover how trivial are the matters that of necessity usually engage it, they become skeptical about feminine mentality; they would as soon think of speculating on what profundities fill the brain of the kitten playing with a ball as of seeking a solution of the mystery behind a woman's fits of abstraction.
However, there was in Susan's face, especially in her eyes, an expression so unusual, so arresting that Spenser, self-centered and convinced of woman's intellectual deficiency though he was, did sometimes inquire what she was thinking about.He asked this question at breakfast the morning after that second visit to Brent.
"Was I thinking?" she countered.
"You certainly were not listening.You haven't a notion what I was talking about.""About your play."
"Of course.You know I talk nothing else," laughed he."Imust bore you horribly."
"No, indeed," protested she.
"No, I suppose not.You're not bored because you don't listen."He was cheerful about it.He talked merely to arrange his thoughts, not because he expected Susan to understand matters far above one whom nature had fashioned and experience had trained to minister satisfyingly to the physical and sentimental needs of man.He assumed that she was as worshipful before his intellect as in the old days.He would have been even more amazed than enraged had he known that she regarded his play as mediocre claptrap, false to life, fit only for the unthinking, sloppily sentimental crowd that could not see the truth about even their own lives, their own thoughts and actions.
"There you go again!" cried he, a few minutes later."What _are_ you thinking about? I forgot to ask how you got on with Brent.Poor chap--he's had several failures in the past year.
He must be horribly cut up.They say he's written out.What does he think he's trying to get at with you?""Acting, as I told you," replied Susan.She felt ashamed for him, making this pitiable exhibition of patronizing a great man.
"Sperry tells me he has had that twist in his brain for a long time--that he has tried out a dozen girls or more--drops them after a few weeks or months.He has a regular system about it--runs away abroad, stops the pay after a month or so.""Well, the forty a week's clear gain while it lasts," said Susan.She tried to speak lightly.But she felt hurt and uncomfortable.There had crept into her mind one of those disagreeable ideas that skurry into some dusky corner to hide, and reappear from time to time making every fit of the blues so much the sadder and aggravating despondency toward despair.
"Oh, I didn't mean to suggest that _you_ wouldn't succeed,"Spenser hastened to apologize with more or less real kindliness."Sperry says Brent has some good ideas about acting.So, you'll learn something--maybe enough to enable me to put you in a good position--if Brent gets tired and if you still want to be independent, as you call it.""I hope so," said Susan absently.
Spenser was no more absorbed in his career than she in hers;only, she realized how useless it would be to try to talk it to him--that he would not give her so much as ears in an attitude of polite attention.If he could have looked into her head that morning and seen what thoughts were distracting her from hearing about the great play, he would have been more amused and disgusted than ever with feminine frivolity of mind and incapacity in serious matters.For, it so happened that at the moment Susan was concentrating on a new dress.He would have laughed in the face of anyone saying to him that this new dress was for Susan in the pursuit of her scheme of life quite as weighty a matter, quite as worthy of the most careful attention, as was his play for him.Yet that would have been the literal truth.Primarily man's appeal is to the ear, woman's to the eye--the reason, by the way, why the theater--preeminently the place to _see_--tends to be dominated by woman.
