"It would have been reward enough to see you make good—and put it all over that bald-headed, dog-faced——"
"My employer, please remember," she said, pretending to reprove him. "And, Jack, he's amusingly decent to me now. Men are really beginning to be kind. Walbaum's people have written to me, and O'Rourke sent for me, and I'm just beginning to make professional enemies, too, which is the surest sign that I'm almost out of the ranks. If I could only study! Now is the time! I know it; I feel it keenly—I realise how much I lack in education! You see I only went to high-school. It's a mercy that my English isn't hopeless——"
"It's good! It's better than I ever supposed it would be——"
"I know. I used to be careless. But what can you expect? After I left home you know the sort of girls I was thrown among. Fortunately, father was educated—if he was nothing else. My degeneracy wasn't permanent. Also, I had been thrown with Jacqueline, and with you——"
"Fine educational model I am!"
"And," she continued, not heeding him, "when I met you, and men like you, I was determined that whatever else happened to me my English should not degenerate. Jacqueline helped me so much. I tried to study, too, when I was not on the road with the show. But if only I could study now—study seriously for a year or two!"
"What do you wish to study, Cynthia?" he asked carelessly.
"English! Also French and German and Italian. I would like to study what girls in college study. Then I'd like to learn stage dancing thoroughly. And, of course, I'm simply crazy to take a course in dramatic art——"
"But you already know a lot! Every paper spoke well of you——"
"Oh, Jack! Does that mean anything—when I know that I don't know anything!"