Part 46 (1/2)

”But, my poor child, that's your splendid art. You are a--an angel-woman, but you can play a she-devil like an inspired creature. You don't mean that you seriously contemplate ruining _my_ reputation and your own--by--”

”I mean,” said the angel-woman, sipping her sauterne, ”that I don't care a flip for your reputation or mine--the weather's too hot--but I'm not going to trail through another slimy play! No; I'll go into the movies first!”

Camden twisted his collar; he felt as if he were choking. ”Heaven forbid!” was all he could manage.

”I want woods and the open! I want a character with a little, twisted, unawakened soul to be unsnarled and made to behave itself. I don't mind being a bit naughty--if I can be spanked into decorum. But when the curtain goes down on my next play, Camden, the women are going out of the theatre with a kind thought of me, not throbbing with disapproval--good women, I mean!”

And then, because Camden was a bit of a sentimentalist with a good deal of superst.i.tion tangled in his make-up, he took Truedale's play out of his pocket--it had been spoiling the set of his coat all the evening--and spread it out on the table that was cleared now of all but the coffee and the cigarettes which the angel-woman--Camden did not smoke--was puffing luxuriously.

”Here's some rot that a fellow managed to drop on me to-day. I didn't mean to undo it, but if it has an out-of-door setting, I'll give it a glance!”

”Has it?” asked the angel, watching the perspiring face of Camden.

”It has! Big open. Hills--expensive open.”

”Is it rot?”

”Umph--listen to this!” Camden's sharp eye lighted on a vivid sentence or two. ”Not the usual type of villain--and the girl is rather unique.

Up to tricks with her eyes shut. I wonder how she'll pan out?” Camden turned the pages rapidly, overlooking some of Con's best work, but getting what he, himself, was after.

”By Jove! she doesn't do it!”

”What--push those matches this way--what doesn't she do?” asked the angel.

”Eternally d.a.m.n the man and claim her s.e.x privilege of unwarranted righteousness!”

”Does she d.a.m.n herself--like an idiot?” The angel was interested.

”She does not! She plays her own little role by the music of the experience she lived through. It's not bad, by the lord Harry! It's got to be tinkered--and painted up--but it's original. Just look it over.”

Truedale's play was pushed across the table and the angel-woman seized upon it. The taste Camden had given her--like caviar--sharpened her appet.i.te. She read on in the swift, skipping fas.h.i.+on that would have crushed an author's hopes, but which grasped the high lights and caught the deep tones. Then the woman looked up and there were genuine tears in her eyes.

”The little brick!” said the voice of loveliness and thrills, ”the splendid little trump! Why, Camden, she had her ideals--real, fresh, woman-ideals--not the ideals plastered on us women by men, who would loathe them for themselves! She just picked up the sc.r.a.ps of her damaged little affairs and went, without a whimper, to the doing of the only job she could ever hope to succeed in. And she let the man-who-learned go!

Gee! but that was a big decision. She might so easily have muddled the whole scheme of things, but she didn't! The dear, little, scrimpy, patched darling.

”Oh! Camden, I want to be that girl for as long a run as you can force.

After the first few weeks you won't have to bribe folks to come--it'll take hold, after they have got rid of bad tastes in their mouths and have found out what we're up to! Don't count the cost, Camden. This is a chance for civic virtue.”

”Do you want more cigarettes, my dear?”

”No. I've smoked enough.”

Camden drew the ma.n.u.script toward him. ”It's a d.a.m.ned rough diamond,” he murmured.

”But you and I know it is a diamond, don't we, Camby?”

”Well, it sparkles--here and there.”