“You’ll have to do some mighty smart trying,” the girl sneered fiercely. “You highbrows think all you’ve got to do is to open a theater and print ‘Ideals’ in big letters on the program, and the public will run to your show. Folks have been going to the theater some before you undertook to uplift it!”
“Do you think they do good work at the other theaters?”
“They ain’t all they might be, perhaps, but they’re so much more in the game than you are, Mr. Head-in-the-Clouds, that you can’t see ’em at all, at all! And to start off with Shakespeare, of course!”
“Lear was a mistake.”
“I should say it was!” she agreed with infinite sarcasm. “Why don’t you look around and see what the others are doing—what the horrid trust is putting on? They know their business, anyway.”
“Oh, come—you are a little hard on us!”
“I mean it. . . . Now, if you don’t mind stepping along, I’m going to shake off this meal sack and hike home to bed. Good-by to high art for me, thank you!”
Brainard started for the door on this broad hint, but paused with his hand on the knob.
“Miss Delacourt,” he said, facing the angry girl, “I came here to-night to say to you what I sincerely believe—that you have in you the making of a fine actress. I gather from what you have said about our undertaking that my opinion means nothing to you. But let me assure you that I didn’t see your mistakes to-night as much as the spirit and the talent—the very great talent, if I am not mistaken.”