Herrick answered her with a smile—"And I don't care."
She, too, smiled. It began to be borne in upon Herrick how great, when she chose to exercise it, was her self-control. She could talk to him with one part of her mind while the other was still listening, peering, questing, trembling for some fatal news. And he was suddenly aware of her murmuring—
"'Vous qui m'avez tant puni,
Dans ma triste vie—'"
"Well, then," she said, "if you must,—I want something. Not protection, not pity, not championship; I'm a little in your own line, you know, I'm not easily frightened.
"'Je suis aussi sans désir
Autre que d'en bien finir—
Sans regret, sans repentir—'
"I don't know if you read Peter Ibbetson?"
"Raised on it!" Herrick said.
"Well, then, you understand things—I don't mean merely his French songs! And that is exactly what I want—to be quite simply and sensibly and decently understood! I am a more successful actress than you realize, you backward Easterners, and I am treated like a goddess, a bad child, a sibyl, an adventuress, a crazy woman. I should like to speak now and then with some one who knew that I was nothing but a lonely girl with some brains in her head, who often took herself too seriously and sometimes, alas! not seriously enough; who was capricious and perverse but not a coward, and oh, who meant so well! Such a person would sometimes say, 'She was silly to-day, but by this time she is ashamed. She had a strange girlhood and they taught her very bad manners, but she is not a fool and she will learn.' Well, I will not have any common person thinking like that about me! It takes an artist to understand an artist! You think me very arrogant to speak like that of you and me, because, at the bottom of your heart, you have the arrogance of all the world—you do not admit that an actress really is an artist! Wait a little, and you shall own that I am one. At any rate, I know a bit of other people's art; it's my pride I was among the first to be made happy by yours—and oh, but I could do very well with a friend I could be proud of!"—It was not very long before he had embarked upon the history of his novel.
He went on and on; he explained to her Ten Euyck's thrust about the photograph; he told her of Evadne and of Sal. The first thing she said to him was—"Is there a play in it?"
"I tried it as a play first, but—"