The Trufflers

CHAPTER XVII – ENTER GRACE DERRING

THE TRUFFLER opened at Albany. Before ten o’clock of that first evening even the author knew that-something was wrong with the second act.

The company wandered across New York State into Pennsylvania; Peter, by day and night, rewriting that unhappy act. The famous producer, Max Neuerman, fat but tireless, called endless rehearsals. There was hot coffee at one a. m., more hot coffee at five A. m., but it was never so hot as the scalding tears of the leading lady, Miss Trevelyan, who couldn’t, to save her, make Peter’s lines come real.

‘There were, also, dingy Eagle Houses and Hotel Lincolns where soggy food was hurled at you in thick dishes by strong-armed waitresses.

Finally, Neuerman himself dictated a new scene that proved worse than any of Peter’s. The publicity man submitted a new second-act curtain. The stage manager said that you couldn’t blame Miss Trevelyan; she was an emotional actress, and should not be asked to convey the restraint of ironic comedy – in which belief he rewrote the act himself.

By this time, the second act had lost whatever threads of connecting interest it may have had with the first and third; so Neuerman suggested that Peter do those over. Peter began this – locked up over Sunday in a hotel room.

Then Neuerman made this announcement:

“Well – got one more string to my bow. Trevelyan can’t do your play, and she’s not good enough to swing it on personality. We’re going to try some one that can.”

“Who, for instance?” muttered Peter weakly.

“Grace Derring.”

We have spoken of Grace Derring. It was not a year since that tumultuous affair had brought Peter to the brink of self-destruction. And that not because of any coldness between them. Not exactly. You see – well, life gets complicated at times. You are not to think harshly of Peter; for your city bachelor does not inhabit a vacuum. There have usually been – well, episodes. Nor are you to feel surprise that Peter’s face, in the space of a moment, assumed an appearance of something near helpless pain.

So Grace Herring was to be whirled back into his life – caught up out of the nowhere, just as his devotion to Sue had touched exalted heights!

The voice of the fat manager was humming in his ears.

“She made good for us in The Buzzard. Of course her work in The Gold Heart has put her price up. But she has the personality. I guess we’ve got to pay her.”

Peter started to protest, quite blindly. Then, telling himself that he was too tired to think (which was true), he subsided.

“Can you get her?” he asked cautiously.

“She’s due here at five-thirty.”

Peter slipped away. Neuerman had acted without consulting him. It seemed to him that he should be angry. But he was merely dazed.

He walked the streets, a solitary, rather elegant figure, conspicuously a New Yorker, swinging his stick savagely and occasionally muttering to himself. He roved out to the open country. Maple buds were sprouting. New grass was pushing upward into the soft air. The robins were singing. But there were neither buds nor robins in Peter’s heart. He decided to be friendly with Grace, but reserved.

It was nearly six when he entered the barnlike office of the hotel, his eyes on the floor, full of himself. Then he saw her, registering at the desk.

He had stopped short. He could not very well turn and go out. She might see him.. And he was not afraid.

She did see him. He raised his hat, Their hands met – he extremely dignified, she smiling a very little.

“Well, Peter!”

“You’re looking well, Grace.”

“Am I?”

They moved, tacitly, into the adjoining parlor and stood by the window.

“I thought – ” he began.

“What did you think, Peter?” Then, before he could reply, she went on to say: “I’ve been working through the Middle West. Closed in Cincinnati last week.”

“Had a hard season?”

“Hard – yes.” She glanced down at a large envelope held under her arm. “Mr. Neuerman sent your play. I’ve just read it – on the train.”

“Oh, you’ve read it?”

“Yes.” Again that hint of a smile. Peter’s eyes wandered about the room. “It’s funny,” she murmured.

“What’s funny?” said he severely.

“I was thinking of this play.” She took it out of the envelope and rapidly turned the typewritten pages. “So bachelor women are – what you call ‘trufflers,’ Peter!”

“It is quite impersonal, Grace.”

“Oh, of course – a work of art – ”

Not clear what that twisted little smile of hers meant, he kept silent.

“Oh, Peter!” she said then, and left him. Everything considered, he felt that he had handled it rather well.

This was Tuesday. It was arranged that Miss Derring should make her first appearance Thursday night. Meantime, she was to get up her part and watch the play closely with the idea of possible suggestions. Peter kept austerely aloof, working day and night on the revision of Acts I and III. Neuerman and Miss Derring consulted together a good deal. On Thursday, Peter caught them at the luncheon table, deep in a heap of scribbled sheets of paper that appeared to be in Grace’s large hand.

They urged him to join them, but he shook his head. He did agree, however, to sit through the rehearsal, later in the afternoon.

Thus it was that he found himself seated next to Grace in one of the rear rows of a dim empty theater, all but lost in the shadows under the balcony. Neuerman left them, and hurried down to the stage to pull his jaded company together.

It seemed to Peter that they were very close, he and Grace, there in the shadow. He could feel her sleeve against his arm. He wished Neuerman would come back.

Unexpectedly to himself, Peter started nervously. His hat slipped from his knees. He caught it. His hand brushed Grace’s skirt, then her hand. Slowly their fingers interlocked.

They sat there, minute after minute, without a sound, her fingers tight in his. Then, suddenly, he threw an arm about her shoulders and tried to kiss her. With a quick little rustle, she pressed him back.

“Don’t,” she whispered. “Not here.”

So Peter leaned back and sat very still again, holding her hand down between the two seats.

Finally the rehearsal was over. They evaded the manager and walked. There was a river in this town, and a river road. Peter sought it. And out there in the country, with buds and robins all about them and buds and robins in his heart, he kissed her. He knew that there had never been any woman in all the world but Grace, and told her so. All of his life except the hours he had spent with her faded into an unreal and remote dream.

Grace had something on her mind. But it was a long time before she could bring Peter to earth. Finally he bethought himself.

“My dear child,” he said – they were strolling hand in hand – “here it is after seven! You’ve had no dinner – and you’re going on to-night.”

“Not to-night, Peter. Not until Monday.”

“But – but – ”

“Mr. Neuerman and I have been trying to explain what we were doing, but you wouldn’t listen. Peter, I’ve made a lot of suggestions for the part, He asked me to. I want your approval, of course. I’m going to ask him to show you what I’ve done.” But Peter heard only dimly. Near the hotel, she left him, saying, with a trace of anxiety: “I don’t want to see you again, Peter, until you have read it. Look me up for lunch to-morrow, and tell me if you think I’ve hurt your play.”

Neuerman came to him late that night with a freshly typed manuscript. He tried to read it, but the buds and robins were still alive, the play a stale dead thing.

Friday morning, there was a letter for Peter, addressed in Sue’s hand. The sight of it confused him, so that he put it in his pocket and did not open it until after his solitary breakfast. It had the effect of bringing Sue suddenly to life again in his heart without, at first, crowding Grace out.

“It’s love that is the great thing,” he thought, explaining the phenomenon to himself. “The object of it is an incident, after all. It may be this woman, or that – or both. But the creative artist must have love. It is his life.”

Then he read Sue’s letter; and pictures of her arose. It began to appear to him that Sue had inspired him as Grace never had. Perhaps it was Sue’s youth. Grace, in her way, was as honest as Sue, but she was not so young. And the creative artist must have youth, too!

The letter was brief.

“Could you, by any chance, run back to New York Saturday – have tea with me? I want you here. Come about four.”

But it fired his imagination. It was like Sue to reach out to him in that abrupt way, explaining nothing.

Then he settled down in his room, a glow in his heart, to find out just what Grace and Neuerman had done, between! them, to The Truffler.

At noon that day a white Peter, lips trembling, very still and stiff, knocked at Miss Derring’s door.

She opened it, just dressed for luncheon.

“Oh,” she cried – “Peter!”

“Here,” said he frigidly, “is the manuscript of your play.”

Her eyes, very wide, searched his face.

“It is not mine. I wash my hands of it.”

“Oh, Peter – please don’t talk like this.”

“You have chosen to enter into a conspiracy with Neuerman to wreck what little was left of my play. With Neuerman!” He emphasized the name. “I am through.”

“But, Peter – be sensible. Come to lunch and we’ll straighten this up in five minutes. Nothing is being forced on you. I was asked…”

“You were brought here without my knowledge. And now – this!”

He strode away, leaving the manuscript in her hands.

She stood there in the door, following him with bewildered eyes until he had disappeared around a turn in the hall.

Peter, feeling strongly (if vaguely) that he had sacrificed everything for a principle, packed his suitcase, caught a train to Pittsburgh, and later, a sleeper for New York.

CHAPTER XVIII – THE WORM CONSIDERS LOVE

ZANIN came in quietly, for him; matter of fact; dropped his hat on the couch; stood with his hands in his pockets and looked down at Sue who was filling her alcohol lamp.

“Well, Sue,” said he, “it’s Saturday at four. I’ve kept my part of the agreement. You haven’t had a word from me. But” – and he did show feeling here – “you are not to think that it has been easy. We’ve talked like sensible people, you and I, but I’m not sensible.” Still she bent over the lamp. “So you’d better tell me. Are we starting off together to-night?”

“Don’t ask me now,” she said.

“Oh, come, Sue. Now, really!”

She straightened up. “I’m not playing with you, Jacob. I promised to answer you to-day.”

“Well – why don’t you? Now. Why wait?”

“Because I don’t know yet.”

“But good God, Sue! If you don’t know yet – ”

She threw out her hands.

He dropped into a chair; studied her gloomily.

Then the bell rang and Peter came in. And Sue faced two grave silent men.

“First,” she said, as briskly as she could, “we shall have tea.”

This much accomplished and the biscuits distributed, she curled herself up on the couch. “Now,” she said, “this has been a difficult week. And I can see only one thing to do. The Nature Film Company is in a bad way.”

For the first time the two men looked squarely at each other. Sue, her color up, a snap in her eyes, suppressed a perverse impulse to laugh, and steadied herself.

“Here we are,” she went on. “I’ve been worn out – no good for weeks. You men are fighting each other – oh, yes, you are! – and yet we three are the ones that have got to do it. Now, Jacob, you have hinted at new expenses, new money problems, to me. I want you to say it all to Peter. Every word. Wait, please! And, Peter, you have felt that Jacob was inclined to run wild. Say it to him.” She wound up in a nervous little rush and stopped short as if a thought frightened – “And as for me, it’s not a question of what I will or won’t do. I’m afraid, if we don’t straighten things out, it’s going to be a question what I shall be able to do. We must get all this – what do you say? – ‘on the carpet.’ Please begin!”

She sank back, drew a long breath and watched them with eyes in which there was a curious nervous alertness.

More than Sue could have dreamed, it was a situation made to Peter’s hand. Without a moment’s warning she had called on him to play, in some small degree, the hero. She had given him the chance to be more of a hero than Zanin. His very soul glowed at the thought. Given an audience, Peter could be anything.

So it turned out that just as Zanin gave an odd little snort, caught squarely between impatience and pride, Peter turned on him and said, very simply:

“Sue is right, Zarin. We have been knifing each other. And I’m ashamed to say that I haven’t even had the sense to see that it wasn’t business.” And he put out his hand.

Zanin hesitated a faint fraction of a second and took it.

Then Peter – sure now that he knew how the late J. P. Morgan must have felt about things, full of still wonder at himself and touched by the wistful thought that had he chosen differently in youth he might easily have become a master of men – hit on the compromise of giving full play to Zanin’s genius for publicity, provided Zanin, for his part, submitted to a budget system of expenditure.

“And a pretty small budget, too,” he added. “We’ve got to do it with brains, Zanin, as you did things at the Crossroads.”

This settled, however, a silence fell. Each of the three knew that nothing had been settled. Sue, that quiet light in her eyes, watched them.

Then suddenly, with her extraordinary lightness of body, she sprang to her feet. Peter, all nerves, gave a start. Zanin merely followed her with eyes. – heavy puzzled eyes.

Sue picked up the tea kettle. “One of you – Peter – bring the tray!” she commanded as she went out into the dark kitchenette.

Peter, with a leap almost like Sue’s, followed. He could not see clearly out there, but he thought she was smiling as she set down the kettle.

“Sue,” he whispered, still in the glow of his quiet heroism, “I knew I loved you, but never before today did I realize how much.” No one could have uttered the words with simpler dignity.

She stood motionless, bending Over the kettle,

“Something has happened to-day,” she said very low.

“Sue – nothing serious!..”

She raised her head now. She was smiling. “How much do you want me, Peter?”

“I can only offer you my life, Sue, dear.”

“Supposing – what if – I – were – to accept it?”

She slipped away from his outstretched arms then, and back to the living-room. Peter, in a wordless ecstasy, followed.

“Jacob,” she said, without faltering. “I want you to congratulate me. Peter and I are going to” – she gave a little excited laugh now – “to try marriage.”

The Worm wandered into the Muscovy for dinner.

Sue and Peter caught him there just as he was paying Lis check.

“Peter,” she said, not caring who might hear – “we owe a lot to Henry. Perhaps everything. In that dreadful mood I wouldn’t have listened to reason from any one else – never in the world.”

“You Worm,” Peter chuckled. “Looks like a little liquid refreshment.”

So the Worm had to drink with them, but conviviality was not in his heart. He raised his glass; looked over it, grimly, at Peter. “I drink,” he said, “to Captain Miles Standish.”

Peter let it go as one of Henry Bates’ quaint whimsies.

But Sue looked puzzled. And the Worm, suddenly contrite, got away and walked the streets, carrying with him a poignantly vivid picture of a fresh girlish face with high color and vivid green-brown eyes.

After a while he tried going home, weakly wishing he might find something to read; instead he found Hy Lowe and an extremely good-looking girl with mussed hair. They fairly leaped apart as he came stumbling in.

“We’re trying a new step,” panted Hy quite wildly. “Oh, yes, this is Miss Hilda Hansen – Henry Bates.”

The Worm liked the way she blushed. But he suddenly and deeply hated Hy.

The Worm went out and sat on a bench in the Square. He was still sitting there when the moon came up over the half-clothed trees.

Little Italians from the dark streets to the southward played about the broad walks. Busses rumbled by on the central drive. A policeman passed.

Full-breasted girls arm in arm with swarthy youthful escorts strolled past. One couple sat on his bench and kissed. He got up hurriedly.

At last, rather late he stood, a lonely figure under the marble arch, gazing downward at his shoes, his stick, his well made, neatly pressed trousers. He took off his new hat and stared at it.

The policeman, passing, paused to take him in, then satisfied as to his harmlessness, moved on.

“Busy day, to-morrow,” the Worm told himself irrelevantly. “Better turn in.”

He saw another moon-touched couple approaching. He kept out of their sight. The man was Hy Lowe, dapper but earnest, clutching the arm of his very new Miss Hansen, bending close over her.

The Worm watched until he lost them in the shadows of Waverley Place. Next, as if there were some connection, he stared down again at his own smart costume.

“Love,” he informed himself, “is an inflammation of the ego.”

Then he went home and to bed.

CHAPTER XIX – BUSINESS INTERVENES

THE Worm met Sue Wilde one afternoon as she stepped down from a Seventh Avenue car – carried it off with a quite successful air of easy surprise. He couldn’t see that it harmed Peter or anybody, for him to meet her now and then. If it gave him pleasure just to see her walk – even in a middy blouse, old skirt and sneakers, she was graceful as a Grecian youth! – to speak and then listen to her voice as she answered, to glimpse her profile and sense the tint of health on her olive skin, whose business was it! So long as he was asking nothing! Besides, Sue didn’t dream. He didn’t intend that she should dream. He had lied to her with shy delight regarding his set habit of walking every afternoon. He hated walks – hated all forms of exercise. He knew pretty accurately when she would be through her day’s work at the plant of the Interstellar Film Company, over in Jersey, because they were doing outside locations now, and outdoor work, even in April, needs light. He knew precisely what trains she could catch; had, right now, a local time table in a convenient pocket. Sue was an outdoor girl and would prefer ferry to tube. From the ferry it was car or sidewalk; either way she couldn’t escape him unless she headed elsewhere than toward her dingy little apartment.

To-day he walked home with her.

She suggested tea. He let his eyes dwell on her an instant – she on the top step, he just below – and in that instant he forgot Peter. “All right,” said he, a pleasant glow in his breast, “if you’ll have dinner with me. They have a fresh lot of those deep-sea oysters at Jim’s.”

Then he caught her hesitation and recalled Peter. For a moment they stood in silence, then: “Don’t let’s trade,” she said. “Come in for tea anyway.”

He followed her in, reflecting. Peter or no Peter, it disturbed him to sec this restraint in Sue Wilde. He felt that it disturbed her a little, too. It was possible, of course, that this was one of the evenings when Peter expected to appropriate her. The Worm was the least obtrusive of men, but he could be stubborn. Then and there he asked if this was Peter’s evening.

She was stooping to unlock the apartment door. “No,” she replied rather shortly, “he’s working tonight.”

They had hardly got into the apartment before the bell rang, and Sue went out to answer it. The Worm, sandy of hair, mild of feature, dropped into the willow armchair, rested elbows on knees, surveyed the half-furnished living-room and smiled.

In a mason jar on the mantel, next to a hit-or-miss row of Russian novels, Havelock Ellis’s Sex in Relation to Society, Freud on Dreams and Psychanalysis, and two volumes of Schnitzler’s plays, blazed a large cluster of jonquils. At the other end of the mantel, drooping over the rim of a green water pitcher, were dusty yellow roses, full blown, half their petals scattered on books, mantel and hearth, their scent heavy in his nostrils. A tin wash basin, on the mission table by the wall, was packed, smothered, with pansies – buff, yellow, orange, purple, velvet black. A bunch of violets surmounted an old sugar bowl that shared with cigarette boxes, matches and an ash receiver, the tabouret by the couch-bed. But what widened the Worm’s faint smile into a forthright grin, square and huge on the table, towering over the pansies, was a newly opened five-pound box of sweets.

Sue came in, smiling herself, with a hint of the rueful, bearing before her a long parcel with square ends.

“I’ll bet it’s roses,” observed the Worm.

She tore off the paper, opened the box with quick fingers – it was roses – deep red ones.

She took a chocolate, nibbled it; then stepped back, laughing a little and threw out her hands. “Henry,” she cried, “what on earth am I to do with him! I’ve hinted. And I’ve begged. I’m afraid I’ll hurt him – ”

“You would go and get engaged to him, Sue. And I must say he plays the rôle with all his might.” After which remark, the Worm produced, scraped, filled and lighted his pipe.

“I’ll start the water,” said Sue; then instead, stood gazing at the flowers. “It’s so – Victorian!”

The Worm grinned cheerfully. “Peter isn’t so easy to classify as that.”

“I know.” She reached for another chocolate. “He isn’t Victorian.”

“Not all the time, certainly. And not all over. Just in spots.”

Her color deepened slightly. “You’ve never read the scenario he did for us, Henry. Nothing Victorian about that. There’s a ring to it – and power. Nobody who misses the modern spirit could have written it. Not possibly. It’s the real battle cry of woman’s freedom. And a blow for honesty! It is when I think of that – how the pictures are to be shown in every city and every village, all over this country – reaching people that the books never reach and touching their emotions, yes, their hearts where feminist speakers and such just antagonize them – ”

The sentence died out in mid-air. Sue, a flash in her deep-green eyes, stared out the window at the old red brick walls that surrounded the score of fenced-in little back yards, walls pierced with hundreds of other rear windows and burdened with cluttered fire-escapes, walls hidden here and there by high-hung lines of washing.

She spoke again. “Don’t you see, Henry, that’s what makes this miserable business worth while, that’s what justifies it – all this posing before those camera people, working with hired actors that don’t for a moment know what it’s all about and don’t understand my being in it or my relations with Peter or the friendly feeling I have for Zanin – it’s getting so I have to fight it out with myself all over again every morning to get through it at all. But when I’m almost hopelessly stale all I have to do is come home here and shut the door and curl up on the couch and read the thing as Peter wrote it – it brings the vision back, Henry! – and then I think of him staking all his savings to make it a success – Oh, I know that’s personal, just for me…”

Sue was having some trouble with sentences today. This one didn’t get finished either. She stood there brooding; started another one: “Henry, Zanin couldn’t do it – with all his intelligence and drive – it took Peter to phrase Zanin’s own ideas and then add the real quality to them and form and human feeling – Zanin is cold, an intellectualist not an artist.” Suddenly she broke out with this – “Of course this marriage means a long series of adjustments. Do you suppose I don’t know that? Doesn’t every marriage?”

The Worm was silent; smoking slowly and watching her. He was thinking very soberly. “Whom among women the gods would destroy they first make honest.”

Sue felt his gaze and raised her chin with a little jerk; tried to smile; finally caught up the box of roses and buried her face in them.

“Peter oughtn’t to spend the money,” she cried, not unhumorously, “but it is dear of him. Every time I come into the room the flowers sing to me.”

“After all,” said he, helping her out, “it’s a relief, in these parts, to see some one taking marriage seriously. Date set yet?”

She nodded.

“Not telling?”

She shook her head.

“Soon?”

She nodded. “That’s all. No more questions.”

“Religious ceremony?”

“Hardly, Henry.” She was a thought grim about this.

“You can be as rationalistic as you like,” said he, musing, “but marriage is a fairy story. Like the old-fashioned Christmas with tree and candles and red bells – yes, and Santa Claus. You can’t rationalise love, and you can’t casualize it. Not without debasing it. Love isn’t rational. It is exclusive, exacting, mysterious. It isn’t even wholly selfish.” His tone lightened. “All of which is highly heterodox, here on Tenth Street.”

She smiled faintly and busied herself over the teakettle.

“I’m glad to see that Zanin keeps friendly, Sue.” She sobered, and said: “There, it’s boiling.” The bell sounded again – two short rings, a pause, one long ring.

She started, bit her lip. “That’s Zanin now,” she said. “He hasn’t been here since – ” She moved toward the door, then hesitated. “I wish you would – ”

She bit her lip again, then suddenly went. He heard the door open and heard her saying: “Henry Bates is here. Come in.”

Zanin entered the room, and the Worm quietly considered him. The man had a vision. And he had power – unhindered by the inhibitions of the Anglo-Saxon conscience, undisciplined by the Latin instinct for form, self-freed from the grim shackles of his own ancestry. He wore a wrinkled suit, cotton shirt with rolling collar, his old gray sweater in lieu of waistcoat.

He drank three cups of tea, chatted restively, drummed with big fingers on the chair-arm and finally looked at his watch.

The Worm knocked the ashes from his pipe and considered. Just what did Sue wish he would do? No use glancing at her for further orders, for now she was avoiding his glances. He decided to leave.

Out on the sidewalk he stood for a moment hesitating between a sizable mess of those deep-sea bivalves at Jim’s oyster bar and wandering back across Sixth Avenue and Washington Square to the rooms. It wasn’t dinner time; but every hour is an hour with oysters, and Jim’s was only a step. But then he knew that he didn’t want to eat them alone. For one moment of pleasant self-forgetfulness he had pictured Sue sitting on the other side of the oysters. They went with Sue to-night, were dedicated to her. He considered this thought, becoming rather severe with himself, called it childish sentimentality; but he didn’t go to Jim’s. He went to the rooms.

When he had gone Zanin hitched forward in his chair and fixed his eyes on Sue over his teacup.

“What is it, Jacob?” she asked, not facing him.

He wasted no words. “You know something of our business arrangements, Sue – Peter’s and mine.”

She nodded.

“There’s a complication. When we formed The Nature Film Company we had, as assets, my ideas and energy and Peters money and theatrical experience. And we had you, of course. You were vital – I built the whole idea around your personality.”

“Yes, I know,” she broke in with a touch of impatience.

“Peter stood ready to put in not more than four to five thousand dollars. That was his outside figure. He told me that it was nearly all he had – and anyway that he is living on his capital.”

“I know all that,” said she.

“Very good!” He put down his teacup and spread his hands in a sweeping gesture. “Now for the rest of it. Of course we had no organization or equipment, so we made the deal with the Interstellar people. They took a third interest. They supply studio, properties, camera men, the use of their New Jersey place and actors and hand us a bill every week. Naturally since we got to work with all our people on the outside locations, the bills have been heavy – last week and this – especially this. Before we get through they’ll be heavier.” He drew a folded paper from his pocket; spread it out with a slap of a big hand; gave it to her.

“Why, Jacob,” she faltered and caught her breath. “Eight hundred and – ”

He nodded. “It’s running into regular money. And here we are! Peter has put in three thousand already.”

“Three thousand!”

“More – about thirty-two hundred.”

“But, Jacob, at this rate – ”

“What will the whole thing cost? My present estimate is twelve to fifteen thousand.”

Sue flushed with something near anger. “This is new, Jacob! You said three or four thousand.”

He shrugged his shoulders. His face was impassive.

“It was as new to me as to you. The situation is growing. We must grow with it. We’ve got a big idea. It has all our ideals in it, and it’s going to be a practical success, besides. It’s going to get across, Sue. We’ll all make money. Real money. It’ll seem queer.”

Sue, eyes wide, was searching that mask of a face.

“But here’s the difficulty. Peter isn’t strong enough to swing it. Within another week we’ll be past his limit – and we can’t stop. He can’t stop. Don’t you see?”

She was pressing her hands against her temples. “Yes,” she replied, in a daze, “I see.”

“Well, now.” He found a cigarette on the tabouret; lighted it, squared around. “The Interstellar people aren’t fools. They know we’re stuck. They’ve made us an offer.”

“For the control?”

He nodded. “For the control, yes. But they leave us an interest. They’d have to or pay us good big salaries. You see, they’re in, too. It means some sacrifice for us, but – oh, well, after all, ‘t means that the Nature Film has a value. They’ll finance it and undertake the distribution. There’s where we might have come a cropper anyway – the distribution. I’ve just begun to see that. You keep learning.”

She was trying to think. Even succeeding after a little.

“Jacob,” she said, very quiet, “why do you bring this to me?”

He spread his hands. “This is business, now. I’ll be brutal.”

She nodded, lips compressed.

“You and Peter – you’re to be married, the minute we get the picture done, I suppose.”

“But that – ”

He waved at the flowers, stared grimly at the huge box of candy. “Peter’s an engaged man, an idiot. He’s living in 1880. I’m the man who offered you love with freedom. Don’t you realize that the time has come when Peter and I can’t talk. It’s the truth, Sue. You know it. You’re the only human link between us. Therefore, I’m talking to you.” He waited for her to reply; then as she was still, added this quite dispassionately: “Better watch Peter, Sue. He’s not standing up very well under the strain. I don’t believe he’s used to taking chances. Of course, when a nervous cautious man does decide to plunge – ”