"I don't apologize," she went on hastily. "What I have done, I would do again—only earlier in the game, but you're the sort of woman I don't like to have look at me that—I mean look down upon me. I haven't many friends. I think I must be half wild, but you make the grade that I have—and you pay the price.... You've always looked attractive to me—so easy and finished and out of the ruck."
There was a real warming sincerity in the words. Paula divined on the instant that she could forever check an intimacy—by a word which would betray the depth of her abhorrence for such a concession to ambition, and for the life which seems to demand it. Selma Cross was sick for a friend, sick from containing herself. On this night of achievement there was something pitiful in the need of her heart.
"New York has turned rather too many pages of life before my eyes, Selma, for me to feel far above any one whose struggles I have not endured."
The other leaned forward eagerly, "I liked you from the first moment, Paula," she said. "You were so rounded—it seemed to me. I'm all streaky, all one-sided. You're bred. I'm cattle.... Some time I'll tell you how it all began. I said I would be the greatest living tragedienne—hurled this at a lot of cat-minds down in Kentucky fifteen years ago. Of course, I shall. It does not mean so much to me as I thought, and it may be a bauble to you, but I wanted it. Its far-awayness doesn't torture me as it once did, but one pays a ghastly price. Yes, it's a climb, dear. You must have bone and blood and brain—a sort of brain—and you should have a cheer from below; but I didn't. I wonder if there ever was a fight that can match mine? If so, it would not be a good tale for children or grown-ups with delicate nerves. Little women always hated me. I remember, one restaurant cashier on Eighth Avenue told me I was too unsightly to be a waitress. I have done kitchen pot-boilers and scrubbed tenement-stairs. Then, because I repeated parts of plays in those horrid halls—they said I was crazy.... Why, I have felt a perfect lust for suicide—felt my breast ache for a cool knife and my hand rise gladly. Once I played a freak part—that was my greater degradation—debased my soul by making my body look worse than it is. I went down to hell for that—and was forgiven. I have been so homesick, Paula, that I could have eaten the dirt in the road of that little Kentucky town.... Yes, I pressed against the steel until something broke—it was the steel, not me. Oh, I could tell you much!..."
She paused but a moment.
"The thing so dreadful to overcome was that I have a body like a great Dane. It would not have hurt a writer, a painter, even a singer, so much, but we of the drama are so dependent upon the shape of our bodies. Then, my face is like a dog or a horse or a cat—all these I have been likened to. Then I was slow to learn repression. This is a part of culture, I guess—breeding. Mine is a lineage of Kentucky poor white trash, who knows, but a speck of 'nigger'? I don't care now, only it gave me a temper of seven devils, if it was so. These are some of the things I have contended with. I would go to a manager and he would laugh me along, trying to get rid of me gracefully, thinking that some of his friends were playing a practical joke on him. Vhruebert thought that at first. Vhruebert calls me The Thing now. I could have done better had I been a cripple; there are parts for a cripple. And you watch, Paula, next January when I burn up things here, they'll say my success is largely due to my figure and face!"
As she looked and listened, Paula saw great meanings in the broad big countenance, a sort of ruffian strength to carry this perfecting instrument of emotion. The great body was needed to support such talents, handicapped by the lack of beauty. Selma Cross fascinated her. Paula's heart went out to the great crude creature she had been—in pity for this woman of furious history. The processes by which her brain and flesh had been refined would have slain the body and mind of an ordinary human. It came to Paula that here was one of Mother Nature's most enthralling experiments—the evolution of an effective instrument from the coarsest and vaguest heredity.
"They are all brainless but Vhruebert. You see, unless one is a beauty, you can't get the support of a big manager's name. I mean without money—there are managers who will lend their name to your stardom, if you take the financial risk. Otherwise, you've got to attract them as a possible conquest. All men are like that. If you interest them sexually—they will hear what you have to say——"
"Isn't that a reckless talk?" Paula asked, pale from the repulsiveness of the thought. "You say it without a single qualification——"
Selma Cross stared at her vacantly for a few seconds, then laughed softly. "You don't actually believe—to the contrary?"