So the weeks were truly emotional. Swiftly, beyond any realization of her own, Paula Linster became full-length a woman. Reifferscheid found it harder and harder to talk even bossily to her, but cleared his voice when she entered, vented a few booky generalities, and cleared his voice when she went away. Keen winter fell upon his system of emptied lakes; gusty winter harped the sound of a lonely ship in polar seas among the naked branches of the big elms above his cottage; indeed, gray winter would have roughed it—in the big chap's breast, had he not buckled his heart against it.... For years, Tim Reifferscheid had felt himself aloof from all such sentiment. Weakening, he had scrutinized his new assistant keenly for the frailties with which her sex was identified in his mind. In all their talks together, she had verified not one, so that he was forced to destroy the whole worthless edition. She was a discovery, thrillingly so, since he had long believed such a woman impossible. Now he felt crude beside her, remembered everything that he had done amiss (volumes of material supposed to be out of print). Frankly, he was irritated with any one in the office who presumed to feel himself an equal with Miss Linster.... But all this was Reifferscheid's, and no other—as far from any expression of his, as thoughtless kisses or thundering heroics.
NINTH CHAPTER
PAULA IS DRAWN DEEPER INTO THE SELMA CROSS PAST AND IS BRAVELY WOOED THROUGH FURTHER MESSAGES FROM THE WEST
Selma Cross frequently filled the little place of books across the hall with her tremendous vibrations before the trial trip of her new play on the road. Paula liked to have her come in, delighted in the great creature's rapture over the hunch-back, Stephen Cabot, author of The Thing. There was an indescribably brighter luster in the waxing and waning of romantic tides, than the eyes of Paula had ever before discovered, so that the confidences of the other were of moment. Selma was terrified by some promise she had made years before in Kentucky. It was gradually driven deep into the listener's understanding that no matter how harsh and dreadful the intervening years had been, here was a woman to whom a promise meant a promise. Paula was moved almost to tears by the other's description of Stephen Cabot, and the first time she saw him.
"I wonder if the long white face with the pain-lit eyes could ever mean to any one else what it does to me?" Selma whispered raptly when they talked together one Sunday night. "Why, to see him sitting there before me at rehearsal—the finest, lowest head in all the chairs—steadies, exalts me! I hold fast to repression.... It It was Vhruebert who brought me to him, and the first words Stephen said were: 'Your manager is a wizard, Miss Cross, to get you for this. Why, you are the woman I wrote about in The Thing!'"
"Tell me more," Paula had whispered.
"We met in Vhruebert's office and forgot the manager entirely. I guess two hours passed, as we talked, and went over the play together that first time. Vhruebert sent in his office-boy finally to remind us that he was still in the building. How we three laughed about it!... Then as we started out for luncheon together, Stephen and I, Vhruebert took his place at the door before us, and delivered himself of something like this:
"'You two listen to the father of what you are to be,'" Selma Cross went on, roughening her voice and tightening her nasal passages, to imitate the old Hebrew star-maker. "'Listen to the soulless Vhruebert, who brudalizes the great Amerigan stage. You two are Art. Very well, listen to Commerce. It took me twenty-five years to learn that there must be humor in a blay. This T'ing would not lift the lip of a ganary-bird. It took me twenty-five years to learn there must be joy at the end of a blay—and wedding-bells. This T'ing ends just about—over the hills to the mad-house. Twenty-five years proved to me what I know the first day—that women of the stage must be beautiful. Miss Gross is not. I say no more. Here I have neither dramatist nor star. I could give the blay by Gabot to Ellen Terry—or to Miss Gross, if Ibsen write it. As it is, I have no name. There are five thousand people in this country writing blays with humor and habby endings. There are ten thousand beautiful women exbiring to spend it on the stage. Yet you two are the chosen of Vhruebert. When you look into each other's eye and visper how von-der-ful you are, with rising inflection; and say, "To hell with Gommerce and the Binhead Bublic!" remember Vhruebert who advances the money!'"
"And did you remember Vhruebert in that fairy luncheon together?" Paula asked happily.