"My dear Tootles, what's happened?"
She turned to him and clutched his arm. Tears welled up into her eyes, and her red lips began to tremble. "What did I look like?" she demanded.
"Splendid!"
"Didn't I get every ounce of comedy out of my two scenes in Act One?"
"Every ounce."
"I know I did. Even the stage hands laughed, and if you can do that there's no argument. And didn't my number go over fine? Wasn't it the best thing in the act? I don't care what you say. I know it was. Even the orchestra wanted it over again."
"But it was," said Martin, "and I heard one of the authors say that it would be the hit of the piece."
"Oh, Martin, I've been sweating blood for this chance for five years, and I'm not going to get it. I'm not going to get it. I wish I was dead." She put her arms against the wall and her face down on her arms and burst into an agony of tears.
Martin was moved. This plucky, struggling, hardworking atom of a remorseless world deserved a little luck for a change. Hitherto it had eluded her eager hands, although she had paid for it in advance with something more than blood and energy. "Dear old Tootles," he said, "what's happened? Try and tell me what's happened? I don't understand."
"You don't understand, because you don't know the tricks of this rotten theater. For eleven weeks I've been rehearsing. For eleven weeks—time enough to produce a couple of Shakespeare's bally plays in Latin,—I've put up with the brow-beating of that mad dog Jackrack. For eleven weeks, without touching one dirty little Mosely cent, I've worked at my part and numbers, morning, noon and night; and now, on the edge of production, he cuts me out and puts in a simpering cow with a fifteen-thousand-dollar necklace and a snapping little Pekinese to oblige one of his angels, and I'm reduced to the chorus. I wish I was dead, I tell you—I wish I was dead and buried and at peace. I wish I could creep home and get into bed and never see another day of this cruel life. Oh, I'm just whipped and broke and out. Take me away, take me away, Martin. I'm through."