The smart little figure--Mrs. Bancroft was, above all things,
_petite_--dressed in black--elegant Parisian black--came into a room
which had been almost completely stripped of furniture. The floor was
covered with Japanese matting, and at one end was a cast of the Venus
of Milo, almost the same colossal size as the original.

Mrs. Bancroft's wonderful gray eyes, examined it curiously. The room,
the statue, and I myself must all have seemed very strange to her. I
wore a dress of some deep yellow woolen material which my little
daughter used to call the "frog dress," because it was speckled with
brown like a frog's skin. It was cut like a Viollet-le-Duc tabard, and
had not a trace of the fashion of the time. Mrs. Bancroft, however, did
not look at me less kindly because I wore aesthetic clothes and was
painfully thin. She explained that they were going to put on "The
Merchant of Venice" at the Prince of Wales's, that she was to rest for a
while for reasons connected with her health; that she and Mr. Bancroft
had thought of me for Portia.

Portia! It seemed too good to be true! I was a student when I was young.
I knew not only every word of the part, but every detail of that period
of Venetian splendor in which the action of the play takes place. I had
studied Vecellio. Now I am old, it is impossible for me to work like
that, but I never acknowledge that I get on as well without it.

Mrs. Bancroft told me that the production would be as beautiful as money
and thought could make it. The artistic side of the venture was to be in
the hands of Mr. Godwin, who had designed my dress for Titania at
Bristol.

"Well, what do you say?" said Mrs. Bancroft. "Will you put your shoulder