“You can take the rest of this week in getting used to jigging about in the chorus,” he said. “Then we’ll begin to work. Only you needn’t despise musical comedy. There are as many great actresses who came out of a musical comedy training as out of Shakespeare. Perhaps for the same reason that white sheep eat more than black ones.” He drilled her on a dozen stages as the tour went on, in a dozen walks from the Parisian’s to the peasant’s (“You’ve never heard of pedestrian art,” he said, “but this is it”), and for dancing, “You’re too old, but we’ll get a colorable imitation,” and in her rooms they went through Rosalind and Juliet till she spoke the lines in English and made every intonation to his satisfaction. “Feel it, you parrot, feel it,” was his cry, and he stopped his mockery of calling her Rosalind. He called her “Iceberg.” He had taken her far, very far, along the technical way, and he had come to a barrier. Where there was question of the grand emotions, her voice was stupid. She seemed intelligently enough to understand with her brain, but there was a lapse between understanding and expression. “I’ve done all I’m going to,” thought Harley. “She’s not an actress yet, she’s only ready to be one when somebody breaks the eggs to make the omelette. I’m not the somebody.” Except that she did not shirk work, she gave no sign of gratitude. Harley was another Pate, another man who was, to please himself, experimenting on her with a system. She was not afraid of him now; men in her experience were usable stepping-stones and when their use to her was gone, she stepped from one to another. In the present case she saw clearly what he was aiming at and the necessity of this training in technique. It had visible results, it wasn’t, like Pate’s, a journey to a peak mistily beyond a far horizon and it would, in any case, last only for the three months she was to spend in the chorus of “The Little Viennese.” He could take pains with her and she would generously be there to be taken pains with; it was a sort of exercise which he preferred to playing golf with the men or the other girls of the company, and she permitted his enjoyment of the preference because it was of use to her. “What did you want to go on the stage for, anyhow?” he asked her once. “To hold them,” she said, “there!” And made a gesture, imperious, queenly, that almost wrung applause from him. “To have them in my grip like that. To know I’ve got them in my power.” “I think you’ll do it, Mary, when you have learned to feel,” he told her soberly. She looked at him with glittering eyes. “Gee, does it get you like that?” he said, amazed. Here, to be welcomed with both hands, was feeling at last. “Yes,” said Mary, dashing him to earth, “there’s money in it.” “You miserable slut!” he said, and flung out of her room.