CHAPTER XV—ZANIN MAKES HIMSELF FELT
SUE was in her half-furnished living-room—not curled comfortably on the couch-bed, as she would have been a month or two earlier, but sitting rather stiffly in a chair, a photograph in her listless hand.
Zanin—big, shaggy, sunburnt—walked the floor. “Are you turning conventional, Sue?” he asked. “What is it? You puzzle me.”
“I don't want that picture used, Jacob.”
He lighted a cigarette, dropped on a wooden chair, tipped it Lack against the wall, twisted his feet around the front legs, drummed on the front of the seat with big fingers.
He reached for the photograph. It was Sue herself, as she would appear in one of the more daring scenes of Nature.
“It's an honest picture, Sue—right off the film.” She was very quiet. “It's the singling it out, Jacob. In the film it is all movement, action—it passes. It doesn't stay before their eyes.” A little feeling crept into her voice. “I agreed to do the film, Jacob. I'm doing it. Am I not?”
“But you're drawing a rather sharp line, Sue. We've got to hit them hard with this thing. I don't expect Mann to understand. I've got to work along with him as best I can and let it go at that. But I count on you.” The legs of the chair came down with a bang. He sprang up and walked the floor again. His cigarette consumed, he lighted another with the butt, which latter he tossed into a corner of the room. Sue's eyes followed it there. She was still gazing at it when Zanin paused before her. She could feel him looking down at her. She wished it were possible to avoid discussion just now. There had been so many discussions during these crowded two years.... She raised her eyes. There were his, fixed on her. He was not tired. His right hand was plunged into his thick hair; his left hand held the cigarette.