"Intolerably—no."
"Only tolerably! I find that worse."
"Every now and then you do something very right," Sherringham said.
"How many such things did I do to-day?"
"Oh three or four. I don't know that I counted very carefully."
She raised her cup to her lips, looking at him over the rim of it—a proceeding that gave her eyes a strange expression. "It bores you and you think it disagreeable," she then said—"I mean a girl always talking about herself." He protested she could never bore him and she added: "Oh I don't want compliments—I want the hard, the precious truth. An actress has to talk about herself. What else can she talk about, poor vain thing?"
"She can talk sometimes about other actresses."
"That comes to the same thing. You won't be serious. I'm awfully serious." There was something that caught his attention in the note of this—a longing half hopeless, half argumentative to be believed in. "If one really wants to do anything one must worry it out; of course everything doesn't come the first day," she kept on. "I can't see everything at once; but I can see a little more—step by step—as I go; can't I?"
"That's the way—that's the way," he gently enough returned. "When you see the things to do the art of doing them will come—if you hammer away. The great point's to see them."
"Yes; and you don't think me clever enough for that."