the necessary modulations, could have made a great mark in it. But the
first words, almost, revealed Isabel Bretherton's limitations, and before
two minutes were over Kendal was conscious of a complete collapse of that
sympathetic relation between him and the actress which the first scene
had produced. In another sentence or two the spell had been irrevocably
broken, and he seemed to himself to have passed from a state of
sensitiveness to all that was exquisite and rare in her to a state of
mere irritable consciousness of her defects. It was evident to him that
in a scene of great capabilities she never once rose beyond the tricks of
an elementary elocution, that her violence had a touch of commonness in
it which was almost vulgarity, and that even her attitudes had lost half
their charm. For, in the effort--the conscious and laboured effort of
acting--her movements, which had exercised such an enchantment over him
in the first scene, had become mere strides and rushes, never indeed
without grace, but often without dignity, and at all times lacking in
that consistency, that unity of plan which is the soul of art.

The sense of chill and disillusion was extremely disagreeable to him,
and, by the time the scene was half-way through, he had almost ceased to
watch her. Edward Wallace, who had seen her some two or three times in
the part, was perfectly conscious of the change, and had been looking out
for it.

'Not much to be said for her, I am afraid, when she comes to business,'
he said to Kendal in a whisper, as the two leant against the door of the
box. 'Where did she get those tiresome tricks she has, that see-saw
intonation she puts on when she wants to be pathetic, and that absurd
restlessness which spoils everything? It's a terrible pity. Sometimes I
think I catch a gleam of some original power at the bottom, but there is
such a lack of intelligence--in the artist's sense. It is a striking