despair: "And these are the kind of people an artist must work
with!" He lifted his arms to heaven, calling upon the high gods
for pity; then, with a sudden turn of fury, ran to the back of
the stage and came mincing forward evidently intending saturnine
mimicry, repeating the ingenue's speech in a mocking falsetto:
"Now what are you two good people conspiring about?" After that
he whirled upon her, demanding with ferocity: "You've got
something you can think with in your head, haven't you,
Missmiss? Then what do you think of that?"

Miss Malone smiled, and it was a smile that would have gone a
long way at a college dance. Here, it made the pitying company
shudder for her. "I think it's a silly, makeshift sort of a
speech," she said cheerfully, in which opinion the unhappy
playwright out in the audience hotly agreed. "It's a bit of
threadbare archness, and if I were to play Miss Lyston's part,
I'd be glad to have it changed!"

Potter looked dazed. "Is it your idea," he said in a ghostly
voice, "that I was asking for your impression of the dramatic
and literary value of that line?"

She seemed surprised. "Weren't you?"

It was too much for Potter. He had brilliant and unusual powers
of expression, but this was beyond them. He went to the chair
beside the little table, flung himself upon it, his legs
outstretched, his arms dangling inert, and stared haggardly
upward at nothing.