life in her, give me every sort of artistic pleasure. What a curmudgeon I
should be--what a grudging, ungrateful fellow, if, after all she has done
to delight me, I should abuse her because she can't speak out her
tiresome speeches--which are of no account, and don't matter, to my
impression at all,--as well as one of your thin, French, snake-like
creatures who have nothing but their _art_, as you call it; nothing but
what they have been carefully taught, nothing but what they have
laboriously learnt with time and trouble, to depend upon!'

Having delivered himself of this tirade, the artist threw himself back in
his chair, tossed back his gray hair from his glowing black eyes, and
looked defiance at Kendal, who was sitting opposite.

'But, after all,' said Kendal, roused, 'these tiresome speeches are her
_métier_; it's her business to speak them, and to speak them well. You
are praising her for qualities which are not properly dramatic at all. In
your studio they would be the only thing that a man need consider; on the
stage they naturally come second.'

'Ah, well,' said Forbes, falling to upon his dinner again at a gentle
signal from Mrs. Stuart that the carriage would soon be round, 'I knew
very well how you and Wallace would take her. You and I will have to
defend each other, Mrs. Stuart, against those two shower-baths, and when
we go to see her afterwards I shall be invaluable, for I shall be able to
save Kendal and Wallace the humbug of compliments.'

Whereupon the others protested that they would on no account be deprived
of their share of the compliments, and Wallace especially laid it down
that a man would be a poor creature who could not find smooth things to
say upon any conceivable occasion to Isabel Bretherton. Besides, he saw