"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.
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