Leila, bent on relieving her mind and heart, went on: "When I went into the chorus it was a choice between that and Macy's. Of course I'd heard things about the life, but I told myself that a girl who wants to can go straight in any walk of life. I had all those copy-book maxims at the tip of my tongue: 'Virtue is its own reward,' and 'Then let us be up and doing, with a heart for any fate; still achieving, still pursuing, learn to labour and to wait,' or something like that.... Willie Stewart--you know the little black-eyed girl who plays next to me on the left--it was she who gave me my first eye-opener. Seeing that I was new at the business, she came to me shortly after we opened and asked me if I didn't want to meet some gentlemen; that she had been asked to bring some of the girls with her to a beefsteak party which was to be pulled off that night. I thanked her and told her I did not care to go. Willie squinted her eyes a little in sizing me up, then treated me to the following advice: 'Look here, angel child, you'd better go back to home and mother. This is no place for a minister's daughter. If you haven't got sense enough to take a chance when it's brought to you on a silver tray--well, all I've got to say is that you're in wrong. Managers want the girls that are popular and the way to be popular is to mingle. Just remember that you don't get anything for nothing in this business or in no other, as far as I've been able to observe. It's give up--_give up all along the line_ and it's only the foxy dame that gets what's comin' to her, even then!'"
"Willie has a very large gold bag, I have noticed," I said.
"And a sealskin coat," Leila added. Then she jumped to her feet and struck at the sofa pillows viciously.... "It isn't the clothes and that sort of thing that appeal to me. It isn't the fact that I'm living in a dingy little room and trying to make ends meet; I'd live on a box of Uneeda Biscuits a day if I saw any hope, the faintest ray of hope that I could win out clean, on merit alone, in the end.... Sometimes I think I'm wrong and that they are right--"
"Leila! You don't think anything of the sort! You know you are right! Hold on a little while longer; you're sure to win! Why, with a voice like yours, and your beauty, I should feel so sure of winning that nothing else would matter--and it doesn't, Leila, nothing else really counts if you live up to the best that's in you!" I had worked myself up to a state of enthusiasm where I almost believed my own words. I took her by the shoulders and held her at arm's length. We looked into each other's eyes, each trying to pierce the veil behind which are concealed our true thoughts.