'I don't suppose you could be;
you are too occupied with your play. I don't know, though; you might be in
love, but I don't think that many women would be in love with you.... You
are too good a man, and women don't like good men.'
Hubert laughed, and without a trace of offended vanity in his voice he
said, 'I don't profess to be much of a lady-killer.'
'You don't know what I mean,' she said, looking at him fixedly, a maze of
half-childish, half-artistic curiosity in her handsome eyes.
Perplexed in his shy, straightford nature, Hubert inquired if she took
sugar in her tea. She said she did; stretched her feet to the fire, and
lapsed into dream. She was one of the enigmas of Stageland. She supported
herself, and went about by herself, looking a poor, lost little thing. She
spoke with considerable freedom of language on all subjects, but no one had
been able to fix a lover upon her.
'What a part Lady Hayward is! But tell me,--I don't quite catch your
meaning in the second act. Is this it?' and starting to her feet, she
became in a moment another being. With a gesture, a look, an intonation,
she was the woman of the play,--a woman taken by an instinct, long
submerged, but which has floated to the surface, and is beginning to
command her actions.
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