"What do I get?" he demanded, passionately. "Do you think it
means anything to me that some fat old woman sees me making love
to a sawdust actress at a matinee and then goes home and hates
her fat old husband across the dinner-table?"
He returned to the fireplace, seeming appeased, at least
infinitesimally, by this thought. "There wouldn't even be that,
except for the mystery. It's only because I'm mysterious to
them--the way a man always thinks the girl he doesn't know is
prettier than the one he's with. What's that got to do with
acting? What is acting, anyhow?" His voice rose passionately
again. "I'll tell you one thing it is: It's the most sordid
profession in this devilish world!"
He strode to the centre of the room. "It's at the bottom--in the
muck! That's where it is. And it ought to be! What am I, out
there on that silly platform they call a stage? A fool, that's
all, making faces, and pretending to be somebody with another
name, for two dollars! A monkey-on-a-stick for the children! Of
course the world despises us! Why shouldn't it? It calls us
mummers and mountebanks, and that's what we are! Buffoons! We
aren't men and women at all--we're strolling players! We're
gypsies! One of us marries a broker's daughter and her relatives
say she's married 'a damned actor!' That's what they say--'a
damned actor!' Great heavens, Tinker, can't a man get tired of
being called a 'damned actor' without your making all this
uproar over it--squalling 'nerves' in my face till I wish I was
dead and done with it!"
He went back to the fireplace again, but omitted another
dolorous stroke upon the mantel.
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