'As they will when the stage is fit for them.'
She could not bear the strain any longer, and to bring him back to
actuality she said,--
'How old are you?'
'Thirty-one.'
His next move horrified her. He stepped forward, seized his
manuscript, and tore it into fragments.
'There!' he said, 'are you satisfied?'
'No. That was childish of you.... You will only sit down and begin
all over again.'
'I swear I will not. I swear it. It is finished. All that is
over.... I don't know how I shall ever begin again. Perhaps I shall
not.... All last night I was struggling to get away from it, to avoid
facing it.... They're all mean and ignoble and pitiful; brain-sick
most of them; and not fit to live in the same world as you. They're
not fit to be exhibited on the public stage, these poor nervous little
modern people with their dried instincts and their withered thoughts,
clever and helpless, rotting in inaction.... No. It has been all
wrong. I've been a fool, but I couldn't pretend.... I think I knew it
in my head, but it needed you to bring it home to me.... I'm not fit
to live in the same world as you. I ought not to have seen you
to-day....'
'Can't you laugh at yourself?'
'Laugh! Dear God, I do nothing else.'
'I mean--happily. You wouldn't be you if you didn't make mistakes--to
learn. You had to learn more about your work than just the tricks of
it. Isn't it so? You despise acting. But it is just the same there.
I wanted to learn more about it than the tricks.'
'Ay, that's it; to learn the tricks and keep decent. That is what one
stands out for.'