But I was conscious of my audacity.

If a certain number of critics have been plain-spoken, Isabel Bretherton has none the less been surrounded for months past with people who have impressed upon her that the modern theatre is a very doubtful business, that her acting is as good as anybody's, and that her special mission is to regenerate the manners of the stage.

To have the naked, artistic view thrust upon her--that it is the actress's business to _act_, and that if she does that well, whatever may be her personal short-comings, her generation has cause to be grateful to her--must be repugnant to her.

She, too, talks about art, but it is like a child who learns a string of long words without understanding them.

She walked on beside me while I cooled down and thought what a fool I had been to endanger a friendship which had opened so well,--her wonderful lips opening once or twice as though to speak, and her quick breath coming and going as she scattered the yellow petals of the flowers far and wide with a sort of mute passion which sent a thrill through me.