“And the publicity means nothing to you?”
“It is nothing to you that your actions are a public scandal?” With which he handed her a folded paper.
She did not look at it; crumpled in in her hand.
“You feel, then, no concern for the position you put me in?”
The girl broke out with--“Listen, father! I came out here to meet you and stop this thing, settle it, once and for all. It is the best way. I will not go with you. I have my own life to live, You must not try to speak to me again!”
She turned away, her eyes darkly alight in her printed face, her slim body quivering.
Wilde's voice had been trembling with anger; now, Peter thought, it was suddenly near to breaking. He reached out one uncertain hand. And a wave of sympathy for the man flooded Peter's thoughts. “This is where their 'freedom,' their 'self-expression' leads them,” he thought bitterly. Egotism! Selfishness! Spiritual anarchy! It was all summed up, that revolt, in the girl's outrageous costume as she stood there before that older man, a minister, her own father!
She caught the new note in her father's voice, hesitated the merest instant, but then went straight down the aisle, lips tight, eyes aflame, seeing and hearing nothing.
The stage door opened. She ran up the steps, and Peter caught a glimpse of the hulking Zanin reaching out with a familiar hand to take her arm and draw her within.... He turned back in time to see Doctor Wilde, beaten, walking rapidly out to the street, and the poet at the door looking after him with an expression of sheer uncomprehending irritation on his keen young face. “There you have it again!” thought Peter. “There you have the bachelor girl--and her friends!”
While he was thus indulging his emotions, the curtain went up on Zanin's little play.
He stood there near the door, trying to listen. He was too excited to sit down. Turbulent emotions were rioting within him, making consecutive thought impossible. He caught bits of Zanin's rough dialogue. He saw Sue make her entrance, heard the shout of delighted approval that greeted her, the prolonged applause, the cries of “Bully for you, Sue!”... “You're all right, Sue!”
Then Peter plunged out the door and walked feverishly about the Village streets. He stopped at a saloon and had a drink.