They laughed.
She took up a sheaf of manuscript.
"If it doesn't bore you too much, I'm going to read it straight through."
"Oh, I forgot; the play, of course."
She looked up at him as if over spectacles.
"What else?"
"You say it has been the rounds?"
"Yes. Peddled in every office in New York. Kline and Alshuler kept it two years. Forensi paid her two hundred and fifty dollars advance on it and then let his option lapse. For another year there was some talk of Comstock and Comstock doing it, and then finally Hy Wolff got hold of it and the very month he died paid her a second two hundred and fifty to renew his option on it. I've always felt that if Ida had kept after Hy Wolff he would have produced it. He had faith in it, but somehow just didn't seem to get to it. You see, Ida hasn't any gumption—not the kind of aggressiveness the game demands. That is why in fifteen years you scarcely know she is in your office. That is why I plunged in and tried to rewrite 'The Web' with her. It's a big story, sweated out of her own agony. She may never write another. Probably won't. My little part in it has merely been to help her co-ordinate—round up the jumble of her ideas, so to speak. There is a big play somewhere in this story. I know you didn't like it as a sketch—I didn't, either. A short play cannot contain this drama. But out of a clear sky it occurred to me that you might see it as a three-act play. Oh, I know it isn't the kind of thing you've your mind's eye on, but why not take that step over into the legitimate via a big popular success? It may pave the way to bigger, finer things. Who knows—Ida Blair—'The Web'—may mean the beginning of your dream come true."
His mouth had straightened and thinned.
"You're right there. Ultimately I'll get into the other. If my brother knew as much about the booking end as he does the realty, I'd have gone over long ago. That is the most the success of the Amusement Enterprise can mean to me—to afford some day the legitimate as a plaything. It costs money to educate the public to better things. It's been profitable playing down to its taste—some day it is going to enable me to afford to be sufficiently altruistic to foot the bills for serving up the best. It costs to educate.",