of stove-side talk between Nora and the other woman of "The Doll's
House." Signora Duse may have felt some misgivings as to the effect of a
dialogue having so little symmetry, such half-hearted feeling, and, in a
word, so little visible or audible drama as this. Needless to say, the
misgiving is not apparent; what is too apparent is simply the technique.
For instance, she shifts her position with evident system and notable
skill. The whole conversation becomes a dance of change and
counterchange of place.

Nowhere else does the perfect technical habit lapse, and nowhere at all
does the habit of acting exist with her.

I have spoken of this actress's nationality and of her womanhood
together. They are inseparable. Nature is the only authentic art of the
stage, and the Italian woman is natural: none other so natural and so
justified by her nature as Eleonora Duse; but all, as far as their nature
goes, natural. Moreover, they are women freer than other Europeans from
the minor vanities. Has any one yet fully understood how her liberty in
this respect gives to the art of Signora Duse room and action? Her
countrywomen have no anxious vanities, because, for one reason, they are
generally "sculpturesque," and are very little altered by mere accidents
of dress or arrangement. Such as they are, they are so once for all;
whereas, the turn of a curl makes all the difference with women of less
grave physique. Italians are not uneasy.

Signora Duse has this immunity, but she has a far nobler deliverance from
vanities, in her own peculiar distance and dignity. She lets her
beautiful voice speak, unwatched and unchecked, from the very life of the
moment. It runs up into the high notes of indifference, or, higher
still, into those of _ennui_, as in the earlier scenes of _Divorcons_; or