And now Reben, goaded by the heat as by innumerable gnats, and fuming at the time he was wasting in the dull, hot town where there was nothing to do of evenings but walk the stupid streets or visit a moving-picture shed or see another performance of that detestable arctic play—Reben proceeded to resent Sheila’s graciousness to both actor and author and to demand a little homage for the lonely manager.
Sheila said to Pennock: “I’m going to run away to some nice quiet madhouse and ask for a padded cell and iron bars. I want to go before they take me. If I don’t I’ll commit murder or suicide. These men! these men! these infernal men! Why don’t they let me alone?”
All Pennock could say was: “There, there, there, you poor child! Let me put a cold cloth on your head.”
“If you could pour cold water on the men I’d be all right,” Sheila would groan. She had hysterics regularly every night when she got to her room. She would scream and pull her hair and stamp her feet and wail: “I vow I’ll never act again. Or if I do, I’ll never marry; or if I marry, I’ll marry somebody that never heard of the stage. I’ll marry a Methodist preacher. They don’t believe in the theater, and neither do I!”
Thus Sheila stormed against the men. But her very excitement showed that love was becoming an imperious need. She was growing up to her mating-time. Just now she was like a bird surrounded by suitors, and they were putting on their Sunday feathers for her, trilling their best, and fighting each other for her possession. She was the mistress of the selection, coy, unconvinced, and in a runaway humor.
Three men had made ardent love to her, and her heart had slain them each in turn. She was a veritable Countess of Monte Cristo. She had scored off “One!” “Two!” and “Three!”
This left her with nothing to wed but her career. And she was disgusted with that.
Only her long training and her tremendous resources of endurance could have carried her through that multiplex exhaustion of every emotion.
Numbers of soldiers desert the firing-line in almost every battle. Occasional firemen refrain from dashing into burning and collapsing buildings. Policemen sometimes feel themselves outnumbered beyond resistance. But actors do not abstain from first-night performances. Even a death-certificate is hardly excuse enough for that treachery.