Dick started unpleasantly. He had not before noticed that she never called him by any name when addressing him, and now it seemed to suggest that there was a difference between them, and he vainly wondered what it was.
“I should be very sorry, Dido, to see you go on the stage. In the first place you don’t know anything about acting, and it would take you years before you could hope to attain any position.”
“I FEEL that I can act,” she said deeply. “My nerves seem so tight that I long to get up and act some life. I want to act love, and then hate, and then murder.”
“Why, Dido?” Dick asked, coolly and curiously, although he felt the deep emotion underlying her words. He recalled what an old club-man said to him once, that every woman disappointed in love wanted to act, and he half wondered if Dido had been falling in love with some of the handsome men who frequented photograph galleries to have reproduced the being they love most of any on earth, but he put away the thought as a wrong to Dido.
“I feel it, I tell you I feel it. I can’t endure a monotonous life any more. I must have some excitement,” she said, passionately.
“I tell you what you want—exercise! You want to walk and you want to swing clubs and you’ll soon be all right. You are so confined that you have a superfluous energy which your work does not exhaust. If you spend it on exercise, it will make you a happier and stronger girl.”
Dido showed a little resentment. It always disgusts a woman to have her romantic feelings dissected in a matter-of-fact manner. Having reached Washington Square, she bade Richard good-bye and went on her way to her humble home.
Richard walked along North Washington Square until he came to the house where he expected to find the man who had taken Lucille Williams from her home. He went up one flight of stairs to Tolman Bike’s apartments, and knocked on the door on which was tacked Mr. Bike’s visiting card.
In a moment the door was opened, and the man he knew as Mr. Clarke stood before him.
“Mr. Bike,” said Richard, with emphasis on the name, “I must speak with you alone.”