"Anyway, a successful phase."

"He wants to produce his little sensation," ruminated Banneker,
recalling Edmonds's bitter diagnosis. "He does it by being clever. There
are worse ways, I suppose."

"He'd always rather say a clever thing than a true one."

Banneker gave her a quick look. "Is that the disease from which the
newspaper business is suffering?"

"I suppose so. Anyway, it's no good for you, Ban, if it won't let you be
yourself. And write as you think. This isn't new to me. I've known
newspaper men before, a lot of them, and all kinds."

"Weren't any of them honest?"

"Lots. But very few of them independent. They can't be. Not even the
owners, though they think they are."

"I'd like to try that."

"You'd only have a hundred thousand bosses instead of one," said she
wisely.

"You're talking about the public. They're your bosses, too, aren't
they?"

"Oh, I'm only a woman. It doesn't matter. Besides, they're not. I lead
'em by the ear--the big, red, floppy ear. Poor dears! They think I love
'em all."

"Whereas what you really love is the power within yourself to please
them. You call it art, I suppose."

"Ban! What a repulsive way to put it. You're revenging yourself for what
I said about the newspapers."

"Not exactly. I'm drawing the deadly parallel."

She drew down her pretty brows in thought. "I see. But, at worst, I'm
interpreting in my own way. Not somebody else's."

"Not your author's?"

"Certainly not," she returned mutinously. "I know how to put a line over
better than he possibly could. That's _my_ business."

"I'd hate to write a play for you, Bettina."

"Try it," she challenged. "But don't try to teach me how to play it
after it's written."

"I begin to see the effect of the bill-board's printing the star's name
in letters two feet high and the playwright's in one-inch type."

"The newspapers don't print yours at all, do they? Unless you shoot some
one," she added maliciously.

"True enough. But I don't think I'd shine as a playwright."

"What will you do, then, if you fire yourself?"

"Fiction, perhaps. It's slow but glorious, I understand. When I'm
starving in a garret, awaiting fame with the pious and cocksure
confidence of genius, will you guarantee to invite me to a square meal
once a fortnight? Think what it would give me to look forward to!"

She was looking him in the face with an expression of frank curiosity.
"Ban, does money never trouble you?"

"Not very mu