“Then you—”
“No,” he said, and went back to the beginning. “I have come—I wanted to come—I wished to say that I wi—” He put forth a manful effort which made him master of the speech he had planned. “I want to thank you for the way you play your part. What I wrote seemed dry stuff, but when you act it, why, then, it seems to be—beautiful!”
“Oh! Do you think so?” she cried, her eyes bedewing ineffably. “Do you think so?”
“Oh—I—oh!—” He got no further, and, although a stranger to the context of this conversation might have supposed him to be speaking of a celebrated commonwealth, Mother of Presidents, his meaning was sufficiently clear to Wanda Malone.
“You're lovely to me,” she said, wiping her eyes. “Lovely! I'll never forget it! I'll never forget anything that's happened to me all this beautiful, beautiful week!”
The little kerchief she had lifted to her eyes was wet with tears not of the stage. “It seems so foolish!” she said bravely. “It's because I'm so happy! Everything has come all at once, this week. I'd never been in New York before in my life. Doesn't that seem funny for a girl that's been on the stage ever since she left school? And now I am here, all at once I get this beautiful part you've written, and you tell me you like it—and Mr. Potter says he likes it. Oh! Mr. Potter's just beautiful to me! Don't you think Mr. Potter's wonderful, Mr. Canby?”
The truth about Mr. Canby's opinion of Mr. Potter at this moment was not to the playwright's credit. However, he went only so far as to say: “I didn't like him much yesterday afternoon.”
“Oh, no, no!” she said quickly. “That was every bit my fault. I was frightened and it made me stupid. And he's just beautiful to me to-day! But I'd never mind anything from a man that works with you as he does. It's the most wonderful thing! To a woman who loves her profession for its own sake—”
“You do, Miss Malone?”
“Love it?” she cried. “Is there anything like it in the world?”