Zanin turned suddenly to Peter. He was a big young man, with a strong if peasant-like face and a look of keenness about the eyes. There was exuberant force in the man, over which his Village manner of sophisticated casualness toward all things lay like the thinnest of veneers. “Well,” he said, “what do you think of Sue here?” Peter repeated his impressions with enthusiasm. “We're going to do big things with her,” said Zanin. “Big things. You wait. _Any Street_ is just a beginning.” And then an impetuous eagerness rushing up in him, his topic shifted from Sue to himself. With a turbulent, passionate egotism he recounted his early difficulties in America, his struggles with the language, heart-breaking summers as a book agent, newspaper jobs in middle-western cities, theatrical press work from Coast to Coast, his plunge into the battle for a higher standard of theatrical art and the resulting fight, most desperate of his life thus far, to attract attention to the Crossroads Theater and widen its influence. Zarin was vehement now. Words poured in a torrent from his lips. He talked straight at you, gesturing, with a light in his eye and veiled power in his slightly husky voice. Peter felt this power, and something not unlike a hatred of the man took sudden root within him. “You will think me foolish to give my strength to this struggle. Like you, I know these Americans. You can tell me nothing about them. Oh, I have seen them, lived with them--in the city, in the small village, on the farm. I know that they are ignorant of Art, that they do not care.” He snapped his big fingers. “Vaudeville, baseball, the girl show, the comic supplement, the moving picture--that is what they like! Yet year after year, I go on fighting for the barest recognition. They do not understand. They do not care. They believe in money, comfort, conformity--above all conformity. They are fools. But I know them, I tell you! And I know that they will listen to me yet! I have shown them that I can fight for my ideals. Before we are through I shall show them that I can beat them at their own game. They shall see that I mean business. I shall show them their God Success in his full majesty.... And publicity? They are children. When I have finished they---the best of them---will come to me for kindergarten lessons in publicity. I'm hoping to talk with you about it, Mann, I can interest you. I wouldn't bring it to you unless I _knew_ I could interest you.” He turned toward Sue. “And this girl shall help me. She has the talent, the courage, the breeding. She will surprise the best of them. They will find her pure gold.” Hushed with his own enthusiasm, he dropped his hand over one of Sue's; took hers up in both of his and moved her slender fingers about as he might have played absently with a handkerchief or a curtain string. Hy, across the table, took this in; and noted too the swift, hot expression that flitted across Peter's face and the sudden set to his mouth.