“Love!” said Mary, blinking startled eyes as if a flashlight had blazed at her out of darkness.
“Well,” said her cynical friend, “when you’ve been more than five minutes on the stage, you’ll know that the way to success lies through the manager’s bedroom. Don’t look at me like that. Down your nose. I’m not a success, I’m in the chorus running straight on thirty-five shillings a week, and there are more of us keep straight than don’t.”
Mary was not conscious that she had looked, fastidiously or otherwise, at her companion. She had a feeling of vertigo; she was thinking of herself, not of the other girl, and of this shameful threat before which she seemed to stand naked in her bones.
“We don’t look after other people’s morals,” Dolly Chandler assured her, “but you may care to know Darley’s married.”
“You think he meant—this?”
Dolly shrugged her shoulders. “He’s a man.”
“And he meant you to tell me what you are telling me?”
“You’re pretty green, you know. I expect he thought I’d put you wise. Though I tell you again it’s not like what I’ve seen of Darley to do the sultan stunt.”
And in ordinary clothes she had turned cartwheels before this man! Mary Ellen blushed scarlet consternation.
Mr. Chown’s thought, “Darley will teach you to feel,” was taking rapid substance, but she must drive it from her, she must go to the theater and sit through two performances and memorize, memorize.