“She shook her head. ‘Not yet, darling, I will now.’ She left his side and came over to me.
“ ‘Mr. Trayne, I know you thought me very peculiar at the theatre. But I was afraid that if I told you what I really wanted you’d have refused to come. You get hundreds and hundreds of people coming to see you who think they can act. Asking you to help them get a job and that sort of thing. Well, I was afraid that if I told you that that was what I wanted, you’d have told me to go away. Perhaps you’d have given me a straw of comfort—taken my address—said you’d let me know if anything turned up. But nothing would have turned up. . . . And, you see, I was rather desperate.’
“The big brown eyes were fixed on me pleadingly, and somehow I didn’t feel quite as annoyed as I should have done at what was nothing more nor less than a blatant trick to appeal to my sympathy.
“ ‘Perhaps nothing would have turned up,’ I said gently, ‘but you must remember that to-day the stage is a hopelessly overstocked profession. There are hundreds of trained actors and actresses unable to obtain a job.’
“ ‘I know that,’ she cried eagerly, ‘and that’s why I—why I thought out this plan. I thought that if I could really convince you that I could act above the average . . .’
“ ‘And she can, Mr. Trayne,’ broke in her husband. ‘She’s good, I know it.’
“ ‘We must leave Mr. Trayne to be the judge of that, Harry,’ she smiled. ‘You see,’ she went on to me, ‘what I felt was that there is an opening for real talent. There is, isn’t there?’
“ ‘Yes,’ I agreed slowly. ‘There is an opening for real talent. But even that is a small one. . . . Have you ever acted before?’
“ ‘A little. In amateur theatricals!’
“I turned away. Amateur theatricals! More heart-burning and disappointment has been caused by those abominable entertainments than their misguided originators will ever realise.