"In which you were to play the lead."
"Yes, and—"
"The play never did go on."
She nodded, and the moistness of her eyes made them shine like jewels. She might not have been outstandingly intelligent, she might or might not have had any dramatic talent, but her own drama was real. She was crushed, frightened, dazed, wounded in the deep and desperate way that a child is hurt when it has innocently done something disastrous, as if she was still too stunned to realize what she had done.
Some men might have laughed, but the Saint didn't laugh. He said in his quiet friendly way: "I suppose you checked up on your legal position?"
"Yes. I went to see a lawyer. He said there wasn't anything I could do. They'd been too clever. I couldn't prove that I'd been swindled. There really was a play and it could have been put on, only the expenses ran away with all the money before that, and I hadn't got any more, and apparently that often happens, and you couldn't prove it was a fraud. I just hadn't read the contracts and things properly when I signed them, and Urlaub — that's Quarterstone's friend — was entitled to spend all that money, and even if he was careless and stupid you couldn't prove it was criminal… I suppose it was my own fault and I've no right to cry about it, but it was everything I had, and I'd given up my job as well, and — well, things have been pretty tough. You know."
He nodded, straightening a cigarette with his strong brown fingers.
All at once the consciousness of what she was doing now seemed to sweep over her, leaving her tongue-tied. She had to make an effort to get out the last words that everything else had inevitably been leading up to.
"I know I'm crazy and I've no right, but could you — could you think of anything to do about it?"
He went on looking at her thoughtfully for a moment, and then, incredulously, she suddenly realized that he was smiling, and that his smile was still without satire.