The next morning, at rehearsal, he said to Sheila, with laborious virulence, “Where’s your friend this morning?”
“He went back to town.”
“How lonely you must feel!”
Sheila was startled at the same twang of jealousy she had heard in Reben’s voice when she and Vickery first met. It angered and alarmed her a little. She explained to Eldon who Vickery was, and that he had run down to discuss his new version of the play. Eldon was mollified a little, but Sheila was not.
Vickery, whose health was none too good, found it tedious to make a journey from Braywood to Clinton every time he wanted to ask Sheila’s advice on a difficulty. He suddenly appeared in Clinton with all his luggage. He put it on the ground of convenience in his work. It must have been partly on Sheila’s account.
Eldon noted that Sheila, who had been rarely able to spare a moment with him, found numberless opportunities to consult with this playwright. Sheila’s excuse was that business compelled her to keep in close touch with her next starring vehicle; her reason was that she found Vickery oddly attractive as well as oddly irritating.
In the first place, he was writing a play for her, for the celebration of her genius. That was attractive, certainly. In the second place, he was not very strong and not very comfortable financially. That roused a sort of mother-sense in her. She felt as much enthusiasm for his career as for her own. And then, of course, he proceeded to fall in love with her. It was so easy to modulate from the praise of her gifts to the praise of her beauty, from the influence she had over the general public to her influence over him in particular.
He exalted her as a goddess. He painted her future as the progress of Venus over the ocean. He would furnish the ocean. He wrote poems to her. And it must be intensely comforting to have poems written at you; it must be hard to remain immune to a sonnet.
Vickery quoted love-scenes from his play and applied them to Sheila. He very slyly attempted to persuade her to rehearse the scenes with him as hero. But that was not easy when they were buggy-riding.
When he grew demonstrative she could hardly elbow his teeth down his throat; for his manner was not Reben’s. It needed no blow to quell poor Vickery’s hopes. It needed hardly a rebuke. It needed nothing more than a lack of response to his ardor. Then his wings would droop as if he found a vacuum beneath them.