“Well, it's all right,” he said. “I wish you success, and the highest salary on Broadway.”
“Don't sneer at me, Lanny. Life has been easy for you. You were born with a gold spoon in your mouth, and you've no right to scorn a poor girl.”
“I'll do my best to remember it. Thanks for telling me the truth.”
“I'd have told you before, Lanny; but it was so hard. I hate to lose you for a friend.”
“I'm afraid you have done so,” he said, coldly. “Your angel might be jealous.”
“I know it's a shock, darling. But you know so little about the stage world. Somebody had to give me a start. You couldn't have done it — you surely know that.”
Said he: “It may interest you to hear that I was thinking of asking you to marry me.”
Did this startle her? If so, she was a good actress. “I haven't failed to consider that. But you have to go to school, and then to college — that's five years, and in that time I'd be an old woman.”
“My father would have helped me to marry, if I'd asked him.”
“I know, dear, but can't you understand? I don't want to be a wife, I want to be an actress! I couldn't think of settling down and having babies, and being a society lady — not in Newcastle, not even in France. I want to have a career — and what sort of a life would it be for you, tagging along behind a stage celebrity? Would you enjoy being called Mister Phyllis Gracyn?”