o the theater every few
days--to help me with French. She is mad about acting, and
there's nothing I like better."

"Also, _you_ simply have to have occupation."

She nodded. "I wasn't brought up to fit me for an idler.
When I was a child I was taught to keep busy--not at nothing,
but at something. Freddie's a lot better at it than I."

"Naturally," said Brent. "You had a home, with order and a
system--an old-fashioned American home. He--well, he hadn't."

"Clelie and I go at our make-believe acting quite seriously.
We have to--if we're to fool ourselves that it's an occupation."

"Why this anxiety to prove to me that you're not really serious?"

Susan laughed mockingly for answer, and went on:

"You should see us do the two wives in 'L'Enigme'--or mother
and daughter in that diary scene in 'L'Autre Danger'!"

"I must. . . . When are you going to resume your career?"

She rose, strolled toward an open door at one end of the
salon, closed it--strolled toward the door into the hall,
glanced out, returned without having closed it. She then said:

"Could I study here in Paris?"

Triumph gleamed in his eyes. "Yes. Boudrin--a splendid
teacher--speaks English. He--and I--can teach you."

"Tell me what I'd have to do."

"We would coach you for a small part in some play that's to be
produced here."

"In French?"

"I'll have an American girl written into a farce. Enough to
get you used to the stage--to give you practice in what he'll
teach you--the trade side of the art."

"And then?"

"And then we shall spend the summer learning your part in my
play. Two or three weeks of company rehearsals in New York in
September. In October--your name out over the Long Acre
Theater in letters of fire."

"Could that be done?"

"Even if you had little talent, less intelligence, and no
experience. Properly taught, the trade part of every art is
easy. Teachers make it hard partly because they're dull,
chiefly because there'd be small money for them if they taught
quickly, and only the essentials. No, journeyman acting's no
harder to learn than bricklaying or carpentering. And in
America--everywhere in the world but a few theaters in Paris
and Vienna--there is nothing seen but journeyman acting. The
art is in its infancy as an art. It even has not yet been
emancipated from the swaddling clothes of declamation. Yes,
you can do well by the autumn. And if you develop what I
think you have in you, you c