The Trufflers. Samuel Merwin

self of hers, I doubt if it, this particular thing, could be done without her. It is Sue—an expressed, interpreted Sue.”

      “This must be the thing he is trying to get Pete in on.”

      “The same. Zanin knows that where he fails is on the side of popularity. He has intelligence, but he hasn't the trick of reaching the crowd. And he is smart enough to see what he needs and go after it.”

      “He is going after the crowd, then?”

      “Absolutely.”

      “And what becomes of the noble artistic standards he's been bleeding and dying for?”

      “I don't know. He really has been bleeding and dying. You have to admit that. He lives in one mean room, over there in Fourth Street. A good deal of the little he eats he cooks with his own hands on a kerosene stove. Those girls are always taking him in and feeding him up. He works twenty and thirty hours at a stretch over his productions at the Crossroads. Must have the constitution of a bull elephant. If it was just a matter of picking up money, he could easily go back into newspaper work or the press-agent game. … I'm not sure that the man isn't full of a struggling genius that hasn't really begun to find expression. If he is, it will drive him into bigger and bigger things. He won't worry about consistency—he'll just do what every genius does. he'll fight his way through to complete self-expression, blindly, madly, using everything that comes in his way, trampling on everything that he can't use.”

      Peter, twitching with irritation, sat up and snorted out:

      “For God's sake, what's the scheme!”

      The Worm regarded Peter thoughtfully and not unhumorously, as if reflecting further over his observations on genius. Then he explained:

      “He's going to preach the Greenwich Village freedom on every little moving-picture screen in America—shout the new naturalism to a hypocritical world.”

      “Has he worked out his story?” asked Hy.

      “In the rough, I think. But he wants a practical theatrical man to give it form and put it over. That's where Pete comes in. … Get it? It's during stuff. He'll use Sue's finest quality, her faith, as well as her grace of body. What I could get out of it sounds a good deal like the Garden of Eden story without the moral. An Artzibasheff paradise. Sue says that she'll have to wear a pretty primitive costume.”

      “Which doesn't bother her, I imagine,” said Hy.

      “Not a bit.”

      Peter, leaning back on stiff arms, staring at the opposite wall, suddenly found repictured to his mind's eye a dramatic little scene: In the Crossroads Theater, out by the ticket entrance; the audience in their seats, old Wilde, the Walrus himself, in his oddly primitive', early Methodist dress—long black coat, white bow tie, narrow strip of whisker on each grim cheek; Sue in her newsboy costume, hair cut short under the ragged felt hat, face painted for the stage, her deep-green eyes blazing. The father had said: “You have no shame, then—appearing like this?” To which the daughter had replied: “No—none!”

      Hy was speaking again. “You don't mean to say that Zanin will be able to put this scheme over on Sue?”

      The Worm nodded, very thoughtful. “Yes, she is going into it, I think.”

      Peter broke cut again: “But—but—but—but. …

      “You fellows want to get this thing straight in your heads,” the Worm continued, ignoring Peter. “Her reasons aren't by any means so weak. In the first place the thing comes to her as a real chance to express in the widest possible way her own protest against conventionality. As Zanin has told her, she will be able to express naturalness and honesty of life to millions where Isadora Duncan, with all her perfect art, can only reach thousands. Yes, Zanin is appealing to her best qualities. And, at that, I'm not at all sure that he isn't honest in it.'

      “Honest!” snorted Peter.

      “Yes, honest. I don't say he is. I say I'm not sure. … Then another argument with her is that he has really been helping her to grow. He has given her a lot—and without making any crude demands. Obligations have grown up there, you see. She knows that his whole heart is in it, that it's probably his big chance; and while the girl is modest enough she can see how dependent the whole plan is on her.”

      “But—but—but”—Peter again!—“think what she'll find herself up against—the people she'll have to work with—the vulgarity.

      “I don't know,” mused the Worm. “I'm not sure it would bother her much. Those things don't seem to touch her. And she isn't the sort to be stopped by conventional warnings, anyway. She'll have to find it out all for herself.”

      The Worm gave himself up again to the experiment with smoke rings. He blew one—another—a third—at the curtain hook..The fourth wavered down over the hook, hung a second, broke and trailed off into the atmosphere. “.Got it!” said the Worm, to himself.

      “Who's the manager he's picked up?” asked Hy.

      “Fellow named Silverstone. Head of a movie producing company.”

      Peter, to whom this name was, apparently, the last straw, shivered a little, sprang to his feet, and for the second time within the hour rushed blindly off into solitude.