Christina gave her mother her hand, much as she might have given her a cup of tea and said, "Well, but that is only where your novel begins?"
"Yes. I thought the interesting part was all to come. I thought I should be justified in supposing my reformed lady to go back to her old habits, perhaps through the mere claim of genuine ties,—old friendships, real relationships—to be caught in some serious crime, involve those friends and, finally, without in the least intending it, draw her daughter and her daughter's lover into her quicksand—of course, by means of their efforts to pull her out! And then to see what happened!"
"When the daughter finds out," Wheeler cogitated, "that should be a strong scene, a very strong scene.—What made you think of reversing the characters?—less trite?"
"Simply, I could handle it this way and not the other. When I had the cheat a young woman, she was very strenuous—I couldn't keep her from being the most lurid of common adventuresses. And I had a theory that people are never like that to themselves. Well, as soon as I substituted a rather passée woman she became much quieter—just a feeble, worthless, selfish person a good deal battered by life, and wanting nothing but comfort—trying to get it in the easiest way. I wanted so much to give the commonplace quality of crime, of what a simple, sensible, ordinary piece of business it seems to the person engaged in it—at any rate until it's found out, and he begins to be reacted on by fear and other people's minds. Ah, if I can only give these people their own point of view, and make one thing after another seem quite ordinary and human, just the necessary thing to do! Until they begin to lose their heads when one gate and then another closes and, finding themselves cornered, they fight like rats in a trap! The good as well as the bad, in one panic degradation of despair! I heard a figure of crime the other day which I should like to carry out. I should like to start with the smallest blemish on the outside of the clean, rosy apple of respectable society, 'the little, pitted speck in garnered fruit, which, rotting inward' lets you, by following it, down and down, from one layer of human living to another, at last hold a whole sphere of crime, collapsed, crumbling and wide open, in your hand. Then I've got to save Evadne in the end, without the effect of dragging her through a trap-door!"
"Well, if you made it into a play," Wheeler persisted, "would the mother or the daughter be the star-part?"
"I could play both!" Christina cried.
Wheeler laughed aloud. "You are too good to be true!"
"Well, but why not? Why not a dual rôle? Even if the relationship were false, the resemblance would have to be real—it's the backbone of the story! Mother and I look a good deal alike, but I've seen chance resemblances incomparably stronger!"
She went on eagerly and Herrick was surprised to see that it was not she alone but Wheeler who took the idea of dramatization seriously. It was his first real gage of what was expected of Christina as an actress—that in a year or two she would be starring on her own account. She was not only Wheeler's leading-woman, she was his find, his speculation; he meant to be her manager and Christina meant that he should, too. Again Ingham's death seemed to be dragging Herrick into the path of success.
Then his attention was caught by Wheeler's saying, "Well, we must all be as criminal as we can, while we can. Once P. L. B. C. Ten Euyck gets to be a police inspector there will be no more crime. The word will be blotted from the vocabulary of New York."