Page:O'Higgins--From the life.djvu/100

 "Then what have I done?" he cried. "What have I said?"

She was too hysterical to explain.

"There I had been," she told it, "for years pursued by these ravenous monsters, men. And you've no idea what a nuisance they are to an actress. They see you all beautifully made up, in the romantic stage lights, being everything sweet and noble and heroic that a playwright can make a woman out to be. And, of course, they go crazy about you—and come around offering to leave wife and family, and home and mother, and business and good name for you—and threatening to throw themselves into the Hudson if you don't instantly throw yourself into their arms. Why! They'd plagued me like a lot of wolves! The maiden pursued! And here, now, when I turned on the most ferocious one of them all— And you've no idea what a scene he'd treated me to only the day before— And when I turned on him and said, 'Well, take me, then! Here I am! Take me!' he began to make excuses. Funny! I laughed so hard I nearly fainted from exhaustion."

He grew more and more angry. He stormed and swore. She could only stammer, "It's—it's so funny!" And at last he stamped out of the house, enraged, humiliated. "And he'll never come back," she said. "Never. Because he knows that if he ever does come back, I'll never be able to look at him with a straight face."