nk? I just came home here and got to
thinking of the kind of life I lead--and I decided that I'm tired of it.
And I'm not going to lead it any longer. That's all."

"Ah," said Tinker quietly. "Nerves."

Talbot Potter appealed to the universe with a passionate gesture.
"Nerves!" he cried bitterly. "Yes, that's what they say when an actor
dares to think. 'Go on! Play your part! Be a marionette forever!' That's
what you tell us! 'Slave for your living, you sordid little puppet!
Squirm and sweat and strut, but don't you ever dare to think!' You tell
us that because you know if we ever did stop to think for one instant
about ourselves you wouldn't have any actors! Actors! Faugh! What do we
get, I ask you?"

He strode close to Tinker and shook a frantic forefinger within a foot
of the quiet old fellow's face.

"What do I get?" he demanded, passionately. "Do you think it means
anything to me that some fat old woman sees me making love to a sawdust
actress at a matinee and then goes home and hates her fat old husband
across the dinner-table?"

He returned to the fireplace, seeming appeased, at least
infinitesimally, by this thought. "There wouldn't even be that, except
for the mystery. It's only because I'm mysterious to them--the way a
man always thinks the girl he doesn't know is prettier than the one he's
with. What's that got to do with acting? What is acting, anyhow?" His
voice rose passionately again. "I'll tell you one thing it is: It's the
most sordid profession in this devilish world!"

He strode to the centre of the room. "It's at the bottom--in the muck!
That's where it is. And it ought to be! What am I, out there on that
silly platform they call a stage? A fool, that's all, making faces,
and pretending to be somebody with another name, for two dollars! A
monkey-on-a-stick for the children! Of course the world despises us! Why
shouldn't it? It calls us mummers and mountebanks, and that's what we
are! Buffoons! We aren't men and women at all--we're strolling players!
We're gypsies! One of us marries a broker's daughter and her relatives
say she's married 'a damned actor!' That's what they say--'a damned
actor!' Great heavens, Tinker, can't a man get tired of being called a
'damned actor' without your making all this uproar over it--squalling
'nerves' in my face till I wish I was dead and done with it!"

He went back to the fireplace again, but omitted another dolorous
stroke upon the mantel. "And look at the w