To repel Reben even by force of arms had seemed the only decent thing that Sheila could do. She was keeping herself precious, as her father told her to. To keep Eldon at a distance seemed to be her duty, at least until she could be sure that she loved him as he plainly loved her. But to fend off Vickery’s love seemed to her a sin. That would be quenching a fine, fiery spirit.
But, dearly as she cherished Vickery, she felt no impulse to surrender, not even to that form of conquest which women call surrender. And yet she nearly loved him. Her feeling was much, much more than liking, yet somehow it was not quite loving. She longed to form a life-alliance with him, but a marriage of minds, not of bodies and souls.
And Vickery proposed a very different partnership from the league that Eldon planned. Eldon was awfully nice, but so all the other women thought. And if she and Eldon should marry and co-star together, there could be no success for them, not even bread and butter for two, unless lots and lots of women went crazy over Eldon. Sheila had little doubt that the women would go crazy fast enough, but she wondered how she would stand it to be married to a matinée idol. She wondered if she had jealousy in her nature—she was afraid she had.
In complete contrast with Eldon’s life, Vickery’s would be devoted to the obscurity of his desk and the creation of great rôles for her to publish. If any fascinating were to be done, Sheila would do it. She thought it far better for a man to keep his fascination in his wife’s name.
Thus the young woman debated in her heart the merits of the rival claimants. So doubtless every woman does who has rival claimants.
Sometimes when Vickery was unusually harrowing in his inability to write the play right, and Eldon was unusually successful in a performance, Sheila would say that, after all, the better choice would be the great, handsome, magnetic man.
Playwrights and things were pretty sure to be uncertain, absent-minded, moody, querulous. She had heard much about the moods of creative geniuses and the terrible lives they led their wives. Wasn’t it Byron or Bulwer Lytton or somebody who bit his wife’s cheek open in a quarrel at the breakfast-table or something? That would be a nice thing for Vickery to do in a hotel dining-room.
He might develop an insane jealousy of her and forbid her to appear to her best advantage. Worse yet, he might devote some of his abilities to creating rôles for other women to appear in.
He might not always be satisfied to write for his wife. In fact, now and then he had alluded to other projects and had spoken with enthusiasm of other actresses whom Sheila didn’t think much of. And, once—oh yes!—once he spoke of writing a great play for Mrs. Rhys, that statue in cold lava whom even Reben could endure no longer.
A pretty thing it would be, wouldn’t it, to have Sheila’s own husband writing a play for that Rhys woman? Well—humph! Well! And Sheila had wondered if jealousy were part of her equipment!