"Out where, dearest?"
Adair grew overcast.
"Mortimer Clark's on the road somewhere," he said reflectively, "and I'm sure he'd make room for me if he had to fire a whole company. Then there's Nan O'Farrell in the Diamond Diadem and Leo Foster in the Slaves of Circumstance. They are all on the cheap, and would jump at the chance of getting me at their prices. As soon as I get round to it, I'll telegraph."
Phyllis hesitated, but at last the words came.
"On the cheap," she repeated. "Why don't you aim higher, Cyril? Why don't you try the real people--those who are worth while, especially now, when you're going to break away from Steinberger?"
His only reply was a shake of the head.
"You know you're too good for this sort of thing," she went on. "It isn't flattery to tell you that--you see it yourself every night--I saw it, and that's why I-- Oh, Cyril, let's try to get where you belong."
"You don't understand," he said moodily. "You don't understand a bit. I had all that once, and I kicked it over. The stage is an awfully small place--for anybody that amounts to anything, you know--though as big as an ocean for the others. There isn't anybody of importance--manager or star--who doesn't hate me." He perceived the doubt in her glance, and continued swiftly: "Oh, it's no conspiracy, or jealousy, or anything of that kind--a tip-top man can override all that if there's money in him for the box-office--but I've set them all against me. There isn't one I haven't punched or insulted somehow. I hold the record for being the best-detested man on Broadway. Why, Alfred Fielman once--that was six years ago, when I was by way of being a metropolitan favorite, and all that, ha, ha--he had me on a forty weeks' contract, and at the end of three he gave me a check for the rest and told me he had no more use for my services. Thirty-seven weeks' full salary--think of it--and the door!"
"But isn't it different now?" asked Phyllis, enfolding him with a pair of the whitest, softest, shapeliest arms in the world, and pressing her cheek against his face. "You've got good since then, and are now mama's little man!"
"Look at last night," protested mama's little man dismally. "Drinking, fighting, gambling, and my job out of the window! That's been me right along--two weeks' notice, and for God's sake, never come back!"