“A blackmailing mama might make you look tired and worried but she wouldn’t put all that sorrow into your eyes. Why, you look like Isolde—by Jove, that’s it! Love stuff!”
“How absurd!” She looked away. “Whom could I be in love with?”
“Not with me, that’s a sure thing. Though, of course you know I’m in love with you.”
“Lou—!”
“Oh, don’t worry. I know I haven’t a chance. But I care enough to be darned upset by your condition. Now, come along, let papa fix things for you.”
“They can’t be fixed, Lou, ever. When you’ve chosen to be two people in one, you’ve got to stand up and take the consequences if God ordains that two’s company and three’s a crowd.” She gave him a smile, whimsical but without mirth. “Have you ever heard that saying: ‘Je suis ce que je suis, mais je ne suis pas ce que je suis?’”
Seabury’s brow wrinkled. “I sing French. I don’t speak it.”
“It’s a play on verbs: ‘I am what I am, but I am not what I follow,’” she translated. “Well, that’s me!”
[55]
] He tried to persuade her to give him her confidence but she smiled and told him there was nothing further to confide.
A few weeks later just before her season closed, he asked what plans she had made for the summer. Kane was arranging to send her on tour with “The Temptress” before opening in New York in a play being written for her. She would have July and part of August to rest.