He saw her as if for the first time. He had never talked with her much; and he had been drunk, on dreams if not on whiskey, the time he had danced with her at the ball. She had been a sort of dream-figure to him, an out-of-the-world creature. He saw her now clearly enough—an intense young egotist in her every word and gesture; no dryad, but soulless enough for all her human nature—a girl who still kept the hardness of a child about her. She would never make a good actress, he reflected; she was too much herself; she was acting abominably her part in this Schnitzler play, but with her own special charm, the charm that made her what she was. But she was not a person to pity. He liked her for that. He would talk to her.
A few moments later, as Elva Macklin was putting on her coat to go home, Felix Fay appeared at the door of the tiny women’s dressing room.
The others had gone, she was there alone.
“May I come in?” he asked.
“Yes,” she said, “whoever you are ... and you may button my spats if you want to, Felix Fay. I’m too tired, and I was going off without them.”
She continued, as he knelt at her feet and twisted the reluctant buttons one by one into place, “I’ve done the circus girl for hours, over and over again. Gregory doesn’t like the way I do it—and I don’t like the way Jimmy Taylor does Anatol. Neither does Gregory, for that matter. Everything’s gone wrong tonight.... Gregory gets more and more Napoleonic. He says, ‘Stop! we’ll do that scene all over again!’ Nothing about what’s the matter, or how it should be done—we just know that it doesn’t suit him, and so we do it differently. And usually worse. Then he frowns; he bites his lip; he even stamps his foot: but even that doesn’t do much good!”
She put out her other foot. “Jimmie’s really impossible as Anatol. He looks all right—but he hasn’t any spirit. You just can’t imagine Jimmie’s having six mistresses. He treats me as though I were his aunt.... Gregory wants me to do the circus girl ‘simply’—whatever that means. I wish he would condescend to explain, instead of just looking haughty.... I’m awfully tired.... Thanks. I don’t feel quite clothed without my spats.”
Felix stood up. “Let’s go somewhere and get something to eat,” he said.
“I’d like to,” she said. “I don’t want to go home. I’m too tired to sleep.” She buttoned her coat about her.
It was a boyish coat, and she wore it with a boyish air. There was something Puck-like in her face, something impish, mischievous.