But she was sitting at the window. She was dressed, but her eyes were dull as she turned to greet him.
“How are you, honey?” he asked.
“I’m all right,” she sighed. The old phrase!
Then he knew he had crossed the Rubicon and must go forward. “Why didn’t you go to your fitting?”
“I tried to, but I was too weak. I don’t need any new clothes. How was your business talk?”
“I can’t tell yet,” he said, and, after a battle with his stage-fright, broached the most serious business of his life. He had a right to be a bad actor and he read wretchedly the lines he improvised on his own scenario. “By the way, I stumbled across Eugene Vickery this afternoon.”
“Oh, did you? How is he?”
“Pretty sick. He’s just finished a new play.”
“Oh, has he?”
“He says it’s the work of his life.”