“Big house!” chuckled the Worm. “Oh, they'll put it across, Sue. You wait! Zanin's publicity has been wonderful. It would have disturbed you, girl—but it's rather a shame you haven't followed it.”
Sue seemed not to hear him. She was leaning out from the doorway, trying to make out the subjects of the two big lithographs. She finally slipped across to the curb and studied them a moment. Both were of herself, half-clad in the simple garment of an island savage; over each picture was the one word, “NATURE,” under each the two words, “SUE WILDE.”
She hurried back and started up the stairs. The Worm saw that she was flushing again and that her mouth wore the set look.
On a landing, holding her back from a group ahead, he said: “Do you know, Sue, part of the disturbance you feel is just a shrinking from conspicuousness, from the effective thing. Self-consciousness! Isn't it, now?”
But she turned away and kept on.
CHAPTER XXXV—THE NATURE FILM
AT that time no moving picture had been given the setting that Jacob Zanin devised for the Nature film. Zanin had altered the interior of the building to make it as little as possible like the conventional theater. Only the walls, galleries and boxes and stage remained as they had been. The new decorations were in the pale greens and pinks of spring and were simple. Between foyer and auditorium were palms, with orchids and other tropical flowers. The orchestra was not in sight. The ushers were calm girls from the Village—students of painting, designing, writing, sculpture—dressed modestly enough in a completer drapery of the sort worn by Sue in the pictures, such a material as Philippine women weave from grasses and pineapple strands, softly buff and cream and brown in color, embroidered with exquisite skill in exotic designs. The stage before the screen (Zanin used no drop curtain) represented a native village on some imaginary South Sea Island. The natives themselves were there, quietly moving about the routine of their lives or sitting by a low fire before the group of huts at one side of the stage.
Very likely you saw it. If so, you will understand the difficulty I am confronted with in describing the place. It made a small sensation, the theater itself, apart from the Nature film. But a penned description could not convey the freshness, the quiet charm, the dignity of that interior.