“Did he want you to take a theatre?” she asked anxiously.
“Good heavens, no! He called it hell!”
Miss Flippance smiled sadly. “That’s his way of consoling himself. He’s dying to get a stock company again. But he mustn’t have even a theatre for amateurs. I’d fight it tooth and nail.”
“It’s bad for him, I know.”
“It’s bad for me,” said Miss Flippance. She puffed out a cloud. “You see, there’d be no place for me. I can wipe most actresses off the stage, but I’m not pretty—at least, not since my illness—and the public won’t have me—except at the piano where I turn my back on them. Plain actresses must be heard and not seen.”
“Oh!” Will was taken aback by such candour.
“Besides, one of the women would probably entangle him into marriage. I don’t mind his having a wife on wires!” And a smile came travelling over the pits of her face.
“You don’t mean to say he really wants to go back to hell?” said Will, dazed.
“Don’t the moths after you’ve saved ’em from the lamp? And it was no easy task saving him. Christmas after Christmas I used to jest: ‘Peace and goodwill indeed! You’ll never have peace till you’ve got rid of your goodwill.’ ”
“But that’s what he says himself,” said Will naïvely. “So he can’t be craving to go back—it’s the marionettes he wanted me to stand in with.”