amous--better still, great."

Susan looked at him incredulously. "Do you know who I am?"
she asked at last.

"Certainly."

Her eyes lowered, the faintest tinge of red changed the
amber-white pallor of her cheeks, her bosom rose and
fell quickly.

"I don't mean," he went on, "that I know any of the details of
your experience. I only know the results as they are written
in your face. The details are unimportant. When I say I know
who you are, I mean I know that you are a woman who has
suffered, whose heart has been broken by suffering, but not
her spirit. Of where you came from or how you've lived, I
know nothing. And it's none of my business--no more than it's
the public's business where _I_ came from and how I've learned
to write plays."

Well, whether he was guessing any part of the truth or all of
it, certainly what she had said about the police and now this
sweeping statement of his attitude toward her freed her of the
necessity of disclosing herself. She eagerly tried to dismiss
the thoughts that had been making her most uneasy. She said:

"You think I can learn to act?"

"That, of course," replied he. "Any intelligent person can
learn to act--and also most persons who have no more
intelligence in their heads than they have in their feet.
I'll guarantee you some sort of career. What I'm interested
to find out is whether you can learn _not_ to act. I believe
you can. But----" He laughed in self-mockery. "I've made several
absurd mistakes in that direction. . . . You have led a life in
which most women become the cheapest sort of liars--worse
liars even than is the usual respectable person, because they
haven't the restraint of fearing loss of reputation. Why is
it you have not become a liar?"

Susan laughed. "I'm sure I don't know. Perhaps because lying
is such a tax on the memory. May I have another cigarette?"

He held the match for her. "You don't paint--except your
lips," he went on, "though you have no color. And you don't
wear cheap finery. And while you use a strong scent, it's not
one of the cheap and nasty kind--it's sensual without being
slimy. And you don't use the kind of words one always hears
in your circle."

Susan looked immensely relieved. "Then you _do_ know who I
am!" she cried.

"You didn't suppose I thought you fresh from a fashionable
boarding school, did you? I'd hardly look there for an
actress who could act. You've got
experience--experience--expe