Page:Stringer - Wine of Life.djvu/153

143, and the novice was neither sure of her way nor fully conscious of what was expected of her.

"Now, try that again, and for the love of God get a little life into it!" Storrow could hear her all but exasperated coach demand.

"I tell you, Hermie, I can't! I can't do it! " was the almost sullen protest of the girl, in a voice already heavy with fatigue.

"You've got to," commanded the other. And he proceeded to goad and taunt her into renewed activity, jockeying her into position again and again as a rider urges a spirited hunter up to an exceptionally hazardous jump.

Storrow resented that arbitrary assumption of control over the mind and body of the girl. He began to comprehend what was taking place on the other side of the wall. He realized the domination, for the moment at least, of that quicker will over the less adroit will of his pupil. Krassler was trying to empty a human body of its own personality and thrust an altogether different one, a make-believe one, into its place. He was taking possession of her, manipulating her, reassembling her to suit his own ends.

"No! No! No! Don't whine that! That's your big line and you've got to get some heart-break into it. Don't sing it like a sick parrot. Feel it, woman, feel it!"

"I can't feel it. It's a fool of a line, and you know it!"

"It's certainly a fool of a line when you read it that way," was the other's impassioned retort. "Any line would be. But the line's there, and you've got to squeeze the last drop of life out of it. That's what God gave you a brain for. So go back and try it again. And don't swallow your voice as though you had a hot potato against your tonsils. Throw it out — straight out in front of you. Throw it out so it'll hit eight hundred people flat in the face."

It was tried again, and Krassler groaned aloud. Then