"I don't have to," he said. "I know. It's just come to me. You see your father didn't happen to mention that you are studying for the stage."
"Studying for the stage!" she cried, as if to refute him, considered, and then nodded emphatically. "Of course I am, and expect to be until I die; but hardly in the sense you mean. My field of study at the present time includes a good deal of practical experience. I've been on the stage now for three years, ever since I left school."
"On the stage!" he exclaimed. "But my dear child, under what name?"
"My own," she answered. "Oh, do not look so puzzled. It is the most unlikely thing in the world that you should ever have heard of me. I'm far from a star, just one of the humble members of first this and then that western stock company. You see, my idea was to get my training and experience before I burst upon New York. But New York is beginning to seem too iridescent a dream ever to be realized."
There was a fall in her voice, a touch of wistfulness, which Hepworth found rather touching because its pathos was both uncalculated and unconscious.
"Why?" he asked in surprise. This note of resignation in her tones, of acceptance of a disappointing, inevitable circumstance, struck him as singularly out of character and aroused his curiosity.
"It's been the same thing several times in succession now," said Fuschia, a touch of superstitious gravity in her expression. "Just as father is preparing to stake me, and I'm getting a company together to take New York by storm as Rosalind, why, father loses his last dime on a dead-sure thing. There's a law about it. The biggest winning proposition in years, always comes along just as I am ready to cross the Alps and storm Italy. Uncanny, isn't it?"
"What nonsense!" Hepworth clipped off the end of a cigar as if it were Fleming's head. "Do not let yourself be affected by such an absurdity. The only law, and I admit it's a strong and binding one, is Jim's selfishness and irresponsibility. Now my dear child," Hepworth was beginning to fancy himself enormously in the rôle of paternal adviser, "you make him give you as much as possible."
"I do," she interrupted softly.
"And you lay it all aside, very securely, never touching a penny of it—"