“It’s what you’ve done, Mr. Smull, not I. You’ve spoiled any pleasure I might have had in working for you. I couldn’t go on here. I couldn’t do good work. When you told me, last evening, that I was out, you were right. I was out as soon as you said so. It was final.... Truth always is final.... I learned it last night.... There is nothing further to learn.”
She walked slowly past him to the door and looked out across the great, barn-like place all littered with the lumber and canvas of half-demolished sets, tangles of insulated wires and cables, and sprawling batteries of lights of every sort.
In the heated stillness of the place a light footfall echoed sonorously across the flooring. The chatter of intruding sparrows came from the arches overhead. Outside sunny windows ailanthus trees, intensely green, spread motionless fronds under the July sky.
Eris moved on, slowly, to her dressing-room—a built-in affair with its flimsy partition adjoining the directors’ office.
Chintz and paint had mitigated the bareness of the room with its extemporised dressing table and couch and a chair or two.
For a while she was occupied with her make-up box; then, locking it, she opened her suitcase and began to lay away such articles as belonged to her.
As she locked and strapped it, Smull appeared at her door, and she rose in displeasure, although the infraction of rule meant nothing to her now.
“Your cheque,” he said, extending it.
“Thank you, I don’t want it.”
“It belongs to you.... You could hold me for the balance of the year if you chose, and not do a stroke of work.”