 comedy, carpentered comedy.
Theatrically, I suppose you're really pretty good or your things
wouldn't succeed. It is when you try to deal with life--and with
women--that you're....” Words failed her. She smoked in silence.

“I'm what?” he ventured. “The limit?”

“Yes,” she replied, very thoughtful. “Since you've said it.”

“All right,” he cried, aiming at a gay humor and missing heavily--“but
now, having slapped me in the face and thrown me out in the snow, don't
you think that you'd better--” He hesitated, watching for a smile that
failed to make its appearance. “That I'd better what?”

“Well--tell me a little more?”

“I was wondering if I could. The difficulty is, it's the whole
thing--your attitude toward life--the perfectly conventional, perfectly
unimaginative home and mother stuff, your hopeless sentimentality about
women, the slushy, horrible, immoral Broadway falseness that lies back
of everything you do--the Broadway thing, always. Ever, in your comedy,
good as that sometimes is. Your insight into life is just about that of
a hardened director of one-reel films. What I've been wondering since we
met this afternoon--you see, I didn't know that we were going to meet in
this way...

“Naturally.”

“... is whether it would be any use to try and help you. You have
ability enough.”

“Thanks for that!”

“Don't let's trifle! You see, if it is any use at all to try to get a
little--just a little--truth into the American theater, why, those of us
that believe in truth owe it to our faith to get to work on the men that
supply the plays.”

“Doubtless.” Peter's mind was racing in a dozen directions at once. This
extraordinary young person had hit close; that much he knew. He wondered
rather helplessly whether the shattered and scattered remnants of his
self-esteem could ever be put together again so the cracks wouldn't
show.

The confusing thing was that he couldn't, at the moment, feel angry
toward the girl; she was too odd and too pretty. Already he was
consci