"What is a wonderful thing?"
For he stopped.
"Woman is a wonderful thing. Acting, as you know, my poor Molly, makes real emotion difficult for us, because we are always connecting emotion with its theatrical gesture. When we ought to weep, we begin to think of how we weep."
"You talk like a book sometimes, Dick. Where do you get all your wisdom?"
"Not from books. Come on tramp with me, and you shall learn where I get it, Molly. All the thoughts worth having come to a man as he walks along the road, especially by night. Books can't tell him anything. I say that we can't help connecting emotion with the stage way of expressing it. This makes us quick to understand emotion when we do see it without the stage directions. Which is odd, but it's true. An actor born is a kind of thought-reader."
"What are you driving at, Dick?"
"I mean that an actor knows real emotion, just because it isn't like the stage business."
"Well, what then?"
"I was thinking of that poor pale lady, Molly. It's four and twenty years since her husband deserted her, and she thinks about him still. There isn't room in a woman's heart for more than one lover in a life, that's all."
"What then?"