Well, whether he was guessing any part of the truth or all of it, certainly what she had said about the police and now this sweeping statement of his attitude toward her freed her of the necessity of disclosing herself. She eagerly tried to dismiss the thoughts that had been making her most uneasy. She said:
"You think I can learn to act?"
"That, of course," replied he. "Any intelligent person can learn to act—and also most persons who have no more intelligence in their heads than they have in their feet. I'll guarantee you some sort of career. What I'm interested to find out is whether you can learn not to act. I believe you can. But——" He laughed in self-mockery. "I've made several absurd mistakes in that direction. . . . You have led a life in which most women become the cheapest sort of liars—worse liars even than is the usual respectable person, because they haven't the restraint of fearing loss of reputation. Why is it you have not become a liar?"
Susan laughed. "I'm sure I don't know. Perhaps because lying is such a tax on the memory. May I have another cigarette?"
He held the match for her. "You don't paint—except your lips," he went on, "though you have no color. And you don't wear cheap finery. And while you use a strong scent, it's not one of the cheap and nasty kind—it's sensual without being slimy. And you don't use the kind of words one always hears in your circle."
Susan looked immensely relieved. "Then you do know who I am!" she cried.
"You didn't suppose I thought you fresh from a fashionable boarding school, did you? I'd hardly look there for an actress who could act. You've got experience—experience—experience—written all over your face—sadly, satirically, scornfully, gayly, bitterly. And what I want is experience—not merely having been through things, but having been through them understandingly. You'll help me in my experiment?"
He looked astonished, then irritated, when the girl, instead of accepting eagerly, drew back in her chair and seemed to be debating. His irritation showed still more plainly when she finally said:
"That depends on him. And he—he thinks you don't like him."
"What's his name?" said Brent in his abrupt, intense fashion.
"What's his name?"