He sighed desperately and laughed with bitterness. “I knew you’d do nothing for me. You’d let me work for you, and make you famous and rich, and squander fortunes on your glory, and you’d let me die of loneliness. You’d let me eat my heart out like a love-sick stage-door Johnny and you wouldn’t care. But I tell you, Sheila, even a manager is a man, and I can’t live on business alone. I’ve got to have some woman’s companionship and tenderness and devotion.”
Sheila could not refrain from suggesting, “I thought Mrs. Rhys—”
“Mrs. Rhys!” he snarled. “That worn-out, burned-out volcano? She’s an old woman. I want youth and beauty and—Oh, I want you, Sheila.”
“I—I’m sorry,” she almost apologized, trying not to insult such ardor.
“Oh, I know I’m not young or handsome, but I’ll surround you with youth. I’ll buy that play of your friend Vickery’s; I’ll get the biggest man in the country to whip it into shape; I’ll give it the finest production ever a play had; I’ll make the critics swallow it; I’ll buy the ones that are for sale, and I’ll play on the vanity of the others. If it fails, I’ll buy you another play and another till you hit the biggest success ever known. Then I’ll name a theater after you. I’ll produce you in London, get you commanded to court. I’ll make you the greatest actress in the world. These young fellows may be pretty to play with, but what can they do for you except ruin your career and interfere with your ambition and make a toy of you? I can give you wealth and fame and—immortality! And all I ask you to give me is your—your”—now he said it—“your love.”
“I—I’m sorry,” Sheila mumbled.
“You mean you won’t?” he roared.
“How can I?” she pleaded, still apologetic. “Love isn’t a thing you can just take and give to anybody you please, is it? I thought it was something that—that takes you and gives you to anybody it pleases. Isn’t that it? I don’t know. I’m not sure I know what love is. But that’s what I’ve always understood.”
He grunted at the puerility of this, and said, brusquely, “Well, if you can’t give me love, then give me—you.”
“How do you mean—give you me?”