"In that case," said Christina, "you can see what a waste it is for him to play villains. Give him to me for the hero of Bryce's play, when I star next year."
"Thank you for waiting a year. You must have arranged your production with Ten Euyck so quickly that it makes a manager's hair raise!"
"As fast as I could learn my lines!" Christina cried. "But sometimes he did throw me out. Ah, if I could only have spoken his speeches too!"
"Many stars in your profession have made that complaint! But I forgive you everything, Christina, since you notified me for an advance sale!"
"She broke her word to me," said Kane, "to do that! I was so anxious not a breath should get out—it might have ruined everything. I caught her second message—to you, Herrick—and stopped it."
Herrick asked, "Will it always be the first which goes to Wheeler?"
She responded with surprised earnestness, "Why, but, dearest, that was business!"
He laughed; and there was no bitterness in his laugh. He was glad of her quick, earnest interest. A month and three days had softened the tragic brooding of Christina's face and drawn them all far from pain and fear, deep waters and dark night. But this first attempt to mention that time with any ease showed him how they all still winced at scars; even this ripple of mirth, glowing and vibrating like the air of all that house with love and joy, had glowed and vibrated too sharply. He wanted some happening that should clear the air, and he did not know what. Work was the safest thing he knew. And even his work, now they had begun, was a good thing to talk of.
"How about that realistic tone?" Wheeler was asking. "Our experience doesn't leave much of Herrick's idea about the commonplaceness of crime—"
"Oh, yes, it does!" Christina interrupted. "They were commonplace enough, to themselves. It was only where we rushed in that it turned into melodrama. That's the way with amateurs! They have to," she flung at Denny, "be more like Dago organ-grinders than any Dago organ-grinder ever was!"