She was hurt now. She walked on for a little time, quite silent.
Finally she stopped short, looked right at him, threw out her hands (he noted and felt the grace of the movement!) and said--
“I don't know how to answer you. Probably I did say just about those words.”
“They are exact... and of course, in one sense, I meant them. I do feel that way about your work. But not at all in the personal sense that you have taken it. And I recognize your ability as clearly as anybody. Can't you see, man--that's exactly the reason I talked that way to you?” There was feeling in her voice now. “I suppose I had a crazy, kiddish notion of converting you, of making you work for us. It was because you are so good at it that I went after you like that. You are worth going after.” She hesitated, and bit her lip. “That's why I was so pleased when Zanin thought he needed you for our big plan and disappointed now that he can't include you in it--because you could help us and we could perhaps help you. Yes, disappointed--in spite of--and--and don't forget the other thing I said, that those of us that believe in truth in the theater owe it to our faith to get to work on the men that supply the plays.... Can't you see, man!”
She threw out her arms again. His eyes, something of the heady spirits that she would perhaps have called sex attraction shining in them now, could see little more than those arms, the slim curves of her body in the sweater and short skirt, her eager glowing face and fine eyes. And his mind could see no more than his eyes.
An automobile horn sounded. He caught her arm and hurried her to the roadside. There were more of the large bare trees here; and a rail fence by which they stood.
“You say Zanin has given up the idea of coming to me with his plan?” He spoke guardedly, thinking that he must not betray the confidences of Betty and Hy.
“Yes, I know. But the man that is going to back him wants to do that part of it himself or have his own director do it.”
Pictures unreeled suddenly before his mind's eye--Sue, in “a pretty primitive costume,” exploited at once by the egotistical self-seeking Zanin, the unscrupulous, masterful Silverstone, a temperamental, commercial director! He shivered.