"So you are going to take me ... you haven't seen me act yet."
"Eversley has."
"Well ... if you want to take his judgment ... but he hasn't told me anything about you yet. What do you want of me; what are you going to do for me?"
If Eversley had told him how desperate my situation was, it wasn't a good move to try to hold out against him now, it might have given him the idea that I was ungrateful, but I couldn't stand for being handed about this way like a female chattel. That Eversley had told him, I saw by the expression of astonishment on his face which slowly changed to one of amusement.
"I'm going to save you from starving to death," he began, and then as the sense of my courage in the face of such an alternative grew upon him, "I'm going to make you one of the leading tragic actresses of America."
"And what am I to do?"
"Whatever I tell you. Eversley thinks you could study a while with Mrs. Delamater. She is wonderful, wonderful!" He described with his arms a circle scarcely larger than the arc of his cherubic contour, to show how wonderful she was.
"I should like some dancing lessons, too," I submitted.
"Do you dance? Ah, no, it is too much to expect; but if I could find me a dancer, Miss Lattimore, a born dancer!" He brought his arms into play again to describe a felicity which transcended expression. "But they are not so easy to find," he sighed audibly. "We must do what we can already."
Eversley told me afterward that Polatkin had the soul of an actor, but the only part which he had ever been able to play without being ridiculous, was Fagin, and now he was too fat even for that, so that he took it out vicariously in the success of those whose opportunity he made. It was the dream of his life to find a real genius, a dancer or a prima donna; I believe I was the nearest he ever came to it; and I owe it to him to say that I couldn't have arrived at more than the faintest approach to it without him.