The business manager chewed irritably on his cigar. They were sitting in the darkened theater while Mary Burton was being rehearsed in the short and dramatic sketch which Smitherton had secured for her. "Has it occurred to you, Lewis," he suggested, with a certain coolness of manner, "that you wouldn't be paying Miss Burton the salary you are if she was like anybody else you've known? Haven't you considered the fact that this lady is going to pack your place to capacity because of her difference?" "Maybe so. Maybe she's a big novelty, and I ain't kicking," assented the other. "But it does seem to me she ought to be more grateful--for the chance she's getting. She's a knock-out all right! Them eyes ought to get the folks going--I wish she'd use 'em more." The two sat silent for a while with the empty chairs around them, then Mr. Abey Lewis raised the megaphone with which he was directing and spoke to the stage. "Daughter," he instructed, "you ain't quite got the psychology of the part yet." Mary Burton came down toward the front of the stage, with her fore-arm raised across her face to shut off the glare of the "foots," as she listened. Mr. Lewis rose and walked thoughtfully down the aisle toward her. It was Mr. Lewis' intent to handle very delicately this new headliner whom he failed to comprehend, and of whom he stood in secret awe. "Now you see, daughter," he went on, "this act gives you a great chance for emotion, and I know, when you get the right angle on it, you'll eat it up. You've just got wise there, where I broke in, to the fact that your husband's a criminal. You ain't never suspected he was a crook before. Now that calls for emotion.... Put more color into it.... Pound it a little harder. When George ends his long speech and pauses, that brings you across, see? It cues your reception of the news. It throws a bomb under you. In times like them women get more hysterical. They ain't quiet in grief, like men, so just cut loose a little more. Give us a nice little scream." For once Mary Burton almost smiled, as she hearkened to this wise dissertation on emotion, but she only bowed her head in assent, as the director added: "Take the scene up again at George's entrance." When he sat down beside Smitherton, Abey Lewis shook his head. "I ain't sure we didn't make a mistake in giving her a straight dramatic sketch," he said dubiously. "She ain't got no emotion. She needs more pep. Now if she had an act with lots of changes of costume--something that would show her off better, it might go bigger." Smitherton growled. "Yes, and then you wouldn't have her at all," he retorted. "Get it through your head that this whole thing is distasteful to Miss Burton. It's bad enough as it is, without asking her to do a diving Venus." "She won't ever be an actor," commented Mr. Lewis, sagely, "but what the hell's the difference? It's the name that's going to carry this act--and it's going to be a knock-out." CHAPTER XXXIV