“But everybody on the stage cannot say ‘yes’ to all those things.”
“No, worse luck! Because soft-hearted fools like me permit crude little girls like you to speak a line without any excuse for so doing. We’ll have no great acting in America until we shut the door upon every boy and girl who thinks he can act, by the grace of God.”
With this finale, the great man walked away, leaving Isabelle feeling very young and very flat. But she rallied presently. Of course, he had exaggerated it. It might be that the majority of people had to go that long, hard road of preparation, but always there would be some who would leap to the top without the ladder. In her deepest, secret heart she knew herself to be of that few.
She took up the subject again that very night, after dinner, with Miss Watts.
“What do you think is the most necessary thing for success, Miss Watts?”
“Work.”
“But in something like the stage, I mean.”
“It doesn’t make any difference what it is, true success is the result of hard work and nothing else,” that lady persisted, bromidically enough.
“Don’t you think it is ever an accident?”
“If it is, it’s the worst accident that can happen to you.”