"When I
think of those suppers and the flowers, I feel--I feel like a robber."
"Don't," begged Carroll. "I am really the most happy of men--that is,
as the chap says in the play, I would be if I wasn't so damned
miserable. But I owe no man a penny and I have assets--I have L80 to
last me through the winter and two marvellous plays; and I love, next
to yourself, the most wonderful woman God ever made. That's enough."
"But I thought you made such a lot of money by writing?" asked Miss
Cavendish.
"I do--that is, I could," answered Carroll, "if I wrote the things
that sell; but I keep on writing plays that won't."
"And such plays!" exclaimed Marion, warmly; "and to think that they
are going begging!" She continued, indignantly, "I can't imagine what
the managers do want."
"I know what they don't want," said the American. Miss Cavendish
drummed impatiently on the tea-tray.
"I wish you wouldn't be so abject about it," she said. "If I were a
man I'd make them take those plays."
"How?" asked the American; "with a gun?"
"Well, I'd keep at it until they read them," declared Marion. "I'd sit
on their front steps all night and I'd follow them in cabs, and I'd
lie in wait for them at the stage-door. I'd just make them take them."
Carroll sighed and stared at the ceiling. "I guess I'll give up and go
home," he said.
"Oh, yes, do, run away before you are beaten," said Miss Cavendish,
scornfully. "Why, you can't go now. Everybody will be back in town
soon, and there are a lot of new plays coming on, and some of them are
sure to be failures, and that's our chance.
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