Susan echoed his laugh, but faint-heartedly. "I've watched your name in the papers," she said, sincerely unconscious of flattery. "I've seen you grow more and more famous. But—if there had been anything in me, would I have gone down and down?"
"How old are you?"
"About twenty-one."
"Only twenty-one and that look in your face! Magnificent! I don't believe I'm to be disappointed this time. You ask why you've gone down! You haven't. You've gone through."
"Down," she insisted, sadly.
"Nonsense! The soot'll rub off the steel."
She lifted her head eagerly. Her own secret thought put into words.
"You can't make steel without soot and dirt. You can't make anything without dirt. That's why the nice, prim, silly world's full of cabinets exhibiting little chips of raw material polished up neatly in one or two spots. That's why there are so few men and women—and those few have had to make themselves, or are made by accident. You're an accident, I suppose. The women who amount to anything usually are. The last actress I tried to do anything with might have become a somebody if it hadn't been for one thing: She had a hankering for respectability—a yearning to be a society person—to be thought well of by society people. It did for her."
"I'll not sink on that rock," said Susan cheerfully.
"No secret longing for social position?"