Page:Willa Cather - The Song of the Lark.djvu/432

 The doctor watched the agitation in his glass. "The same," he said without lifting his eyes. "That 's good enough. I can't raise you."

Fred leaned forward, and looked sharply into his face. "That 's the point; how could you raise me? Once again!"

"Once again, and always the same!" The doctor put down his glass. "This does n't seem to produce any symptoms in me to-night." He lit a cigar. "Seriously, Freddy, I wish I knew more about what she 's driving at. It makes me jealous, when you are so in it and I 'm not."

"In it?" Fred started up. "My God, have n't you seen her this blessed night?—when she 'd have kicked any other man down the elevator shaft, if I know her. Leave me something; at least what I can pay my five bucks for."

"Seems to me you get a good deal for your five bucks," said Archie ruefully. "And that, after all, is what she cares about,—what people get."

Fred lit a cigarette, took a puff or two, and then threw it away. He was lounging back in his chair, and his face was pale and drawn hard by that mood of intense concentration which lurks under the sunny shallows of the vineyard. In his voice there was a longer perspective than usual, a slight remoteness. "You see, Archie, it 's all very simple, a natural development. It 's exactly what Mahler said back there in the beginning, when she sang Woglinde. It 's the idea, the basic idea, pulsing behind every bar she sings. She simplifies a character down to the musical idea it 's built on, and makes everything conform to that. The people who chatter about her being a great actress don't seem to get the notion of where she gets the notion. It all goes back to her original endowment, her tremendous musical talent. Instead of inventing a lot of business and expedients to suggest character, she knows the thing at the root, and lets the musical pattern take care of her. The score pours her into all those lovely postures, makes the light and shadow go over her face, lifts her and drops her. She lies on it, the