“Anyway, I can’t be knighted,” Sylvia laughed.
“Oh, don’t be too sure. A nation that has managed to turn its artists into gentlemen will soon insist on turning its women into gentlemen, too, or at any rate on securing their good manners in some way.”
“Women will never really have good manners,” Sylvia said.
“No, thank God. There you’re right. Well, good-by. It’s been so jolly to talk to you, and again I’ve loved every moment of this afternoon. Charles,” she added to the handsome boy, “after bragging about your country’s good manners, let’s see you make a decent bow.”
He inclined his head with a grave courtesy, opened the door for his mother, and followed her out.
The visit of Michael’s sister, notwithstanding that she had envied Sylvia’s luck, left her with very little opinion of it herself. What was her success, after all? A temporary elation dependent upon good health and the public taste, financially uncertain, emotionally wearing, radically unsatisfying and insecure, for, however good her performance was, it was always mummery, really, as near as mummery could get to creative work, perhaps, but mortal like its maker.
“Sad to think this is the last performance here,” said her maid.
Sylvia agreed with her. It was a relief to find a peg on which to hang the unreasonable depression that was weighing her down. She passed out of her dressing-room. As the stage door swung to behind her a figure stepped into the lamplight of the narrow court; it was Jimmy Monkley. The spruceness had left him; all the color, too, had gone from his face, which was now sickly white—an evil face with its sandy mustache streaked with gray and its lusterless green eyes. Sylvia was afraid that from the way she started back from him he would think that she scorned him for having been in prison, and with an effort she tried to be cordial.
“You’ve done damned well for yourself,” he said, paying no attention to what she was saying. She found this meeting overwhelmingly repulsive and moved toward her taxi. It was seeming to her that Monkley had the power to snatch her away and plunge her back into that life of theirs. She would really rather have met Philip than him.
“Damned well for yourself,” he repeated.