Hamilt shrugged.
"If I ever did get into the theatrical game," he answered rather more good-humoredly than he had yet spoken, "I wouldn't insult the public by a perpetual bluff that they were getting something new. I wouldn't keep handing out things that assumed the public all had salacious minds or else no minds at all. I don't mean that I'd go in for uplift stuff—that isn't what the theater is for—it's to amuse—to thrill— to wake up our emotions—it's to play—But as you chaps who control the thing have it going now it's so damnably mechanical there's no sense of play left in it. Why don't you find something that admits the audience has an imagination?"
"As for instance?" Graemer put in adroitly.
"I don't know—" Hamilt sighed, "I haven't the least idea what. Only it ought to be something that everybody is unconsciously hankering for—something that we miss all the while—something we lack in this machine-age. Something that will come across the footlights by itself instead of having to have the spotlight show it to us, something that would make us feel the way we did when we were kids—I guess it's romance—and perhaps the spirit of it is gone—"
Graemer smiled. He nodded to Edwina. Then he drew a long breath and put his case bluntly.
"I came in here rather deliberately, Mr. Hamilt, because I've been wanting to have a talk with you for a long time. It isn't only about 'The Juggler' that I wanted to talk with you but about all of my productions. There are so many of them and I am so busy with them that there are a lot of angles of the game that I do not have time to touch. The thing I need is what you have aptly described—some one who will make the public want what it's going to get. Some one who will make it think it's going to get what it wants. The kind of thing you did last fall in politics—making the whole thing seem something any regular fellow must find out about and something he'd have a lot of fun finding out. It's struck me all the while you were pulling your strings that that sort of work about the stage would wake up the theater-goer the same way you waked up the voter."
"It might," agreed Mr. Hamilt cautiously. "There might be ways—if you had something to back your statements that the game was worth while—I mean to the theater-goer—"
"Well, wouldn't you be willing to think it over and have another talk with me? I don't mean immediately and I do mean on a big scale. I'm sure you understand that—"
Hamilt motioned for the waiter, coolly insisted on paying his own check and rose.
"What you suggest is rather interesting," was all the answer he vouchsafed, "I might."