situation.

Of one thing I am certain. While I was with Signor--the name by which
Mr. Watts was known among his friends--I never had one single pang of
regret for the theater. This may do me no credit, but it is _true_.

I wondered at the new life, and worshiped it because of its beauty. When
it suddenly came to an end, I was thunderstruck; and refused at first to
consent to the separation, which was arranged for me in much the same
way as my marriage had been.

The whole thing was managed by those kind friends whose chief business
in life seems to be the care of others. I don't blame them. There are
cases where no one is to blame. "There do exist such things as honest
misunderstandings," as Charles Reade was always impressing on me at a
later time. There were no vulgar accusations on either side, and the
words I read in the deed of separation, "incompatibility of temper"--a
mere legal phrase--_more_ than covered the ground. Truer still would
have been "incompatibility of _occupation_," and the interference of
well-meaning friends. We all suffer from that sort of thing. Pray God
one be not a well-meaning friend one's self!

"The marriage was not a happy one," they will probably say after my
death, and I forestall them by saying that it in many ways was very
happy indeed. What bitterness there was effaced itself in a very
remarkable way.

I saw Mr. Watts but once face to face after the separation. We met in
the street at Brighton, and he told me that I had grown! I was never to
speak to him again. But years later, after I had appeared at the Lyceum