The other leaned forward eagerly, "I liked you from the first moment, Paula," she said. "You were so rounded--it seemed to me. I'm all streaky, all one-sided. You're bred. I'm cattle.... Some time I'll tell you how it all began. I said I would be the greatest living tragedienne--hurled this at a lot of cat-minds down in Kentucky fifteen years ago. Of course, I shall. It does not mean so much to me as I thought, and it may be a bauble to you, but I wanted it. Its far-awayness doesn't torture me as it once did, but one pays a ghastly price. Yes, it's a climb, dear. You must have bone and blood and brain--a sort of brain--and you should have a cheer from below; but I didn't. I wonder if there ever was a fight that can match mine? If so, it would not be a good tale for children or grown-ups with delicate nerves. Little women always hated me. I remember, one restaurant cashier on Eighth Avenue told me I was too unsightly to be a waitress. I have done kitchen pot-boilers and scrubbed tenement-stairs. Then, because I repeated parts of plays in those horrid halls--they said I was crazy.... Why, I have felt a perfect lust for suicide--felt my breast ache for a cool knife and my hand rise gladly. Once I played a freak part--that was my greater degradation--debased my soul by making my body look worse than it is. I went down to hell for that--and was forgiven. I have been so homesick, Paula, that I could have eaten the dirt in the road of that little Kentucky town.... Yes, I pressed against the steel until something broke--it was the steel, not me. Oh, I could tell you much!..." She paused but a moment. "The thing so dreadful to overcome was that I have a body like a great Dane. It would not have hurt a writer, a painter, even a singer, so much, but we of the drama are so dependent upon the shape of our bodies. Then, my face is like a dog or a horse or a cat--all these I have been likened to. Then I was slow to learn repression. This is a part of culture, I guess--breeding. Mine is a lineage of Kentucky poor white trash, who knows, but a speck of 'nigger'? I don't care now, only it gave me a temper of seven devils, if it was so. These are some of the things I have contended with. I would go to a manager and he would laugh me along, trying to get rid of me gracefully, thinking that some of his friends were playing a practical joke on him. Vhruebert thought that at first. Vhruebert calls me _The Thing_ now. I could have done better had I been a cripple; there are parts for a cripple. And you watch, Paula, next January when I burn up things here, they'll say my success is largely due to my figure and face!"