attempts to inspire him with her own aversion for the stage; and seeing the childish pleasure which he had in his work, she tried to help him by her criticisms and her counsel. She had been trained in a "dramatic school," and she endeavoured to give him the benefit of that training in her advice. She found, to her greater bewilderment, that he did not wish to be an actor; that the very thought of coming out before the opera-glasses and mimicking love or grief or any of his private emotions, was enough to make him blush. "I couldn't," he said. "Really—I know I couldn't." It was rather a joke to masquerade, unknown to the public, in the ranks of the silent; but imagine—he looked out at the leading man making stage love to the leading woman in a voice to reach the galleries—imagine him doing that!
"Well, for goodness' sake," she said, "what do you want to do? And why don't you find out, and go ahead and do it?"
"I am. I want to live. And I am living."
"That's all very well for the present—but what about your future? You don't intend to be a super all your life?"
"I don't intend anything, any more," he replied contentedly. "I'm tired of planning futures that never work out. Things will develop in their own way. I'm not troubling about them."
She turned away from him with a gesture of exasperation which he did not understand; and she went from him to Pittsey, who had been watching Don and her together with the mild curiosity that was natural to him.
