When Papa Claude returned, her first impulse was to pour out her troubles
to him; but second thought restrained her. He was too much a part of that
casual, irresponsible world to take anything it did or said seriously.
She called through the door to him that she had gone to bed and was going
to stay there.
But she did not stay there. She got up and knelt by the open window,
looking across the seething mass of humanity on the boardwalk below to
the calm stretches of blue sea beyond. For the first time, she faced her
problem fairly and squarely. Up to now she had been trying to compromise,
to be broad and tolerant and cosmopolitan. But she had to admit that the
new life satisfied her no more than the old had. One was too
circumscribed, the other too free. If it was true that she had no talent
and was simply tolerated in the company because of Harold Phipps, she
must know it at once. To be drawing a salary that she did not earn, and
accepting favors for which a definite reward would be expected, was
utterly intolerable to her.
A wild desire seized her to go back to New York and seek another
engagement. In spite of what that odious article said, she believed that
she could succeed on the stage.
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