audacity. If a certain number of critics have been plain-spoken, Isabel
Bretherton has none the less been surrounded for months past with people
who have impressed upon her that the modern theatre is a very doubtful
business, that her acting is as good as anybody's, and that her special
mission is to regenerate the manners of the stage. To have the naked,
artistic view thrust upon her--that it is the actress's business to
_act_, and that if she does that well, whatever may be her personal
short-comings, her generation has cause to be grateful to her--must be
repugnant to her. She, too, talks about art, but it is like a child who
learns a string of long words without understanding them. She walked on
beside me while I cooled down and thought what a fool I had been to
endanger a friendship which had opened so well,--her wonderful lips
opening once or twice as though to speak, and her quick breath coming and
going as she scattered the yellow petals of the flowers far and wide with
a sort of mute passion which sent a thrill through me. It was as though
she could not trust herself to speak, and I waited awkwardly on
Providence, wishing the others were not so far off. But suddenly the
tension of her mood seemed to give way. Her smile flashed out, and she
turned upon me with a sweet, eager graciousness, quite indescribable.

'"No, we won't throw stones at her! She _is_ great, I know, but that
other feeling is so strong in me. I care for my art; it seems to me
grand, magnificent!--but I think I care still more for making people
feel it is work a good woman can do, for holding my own in it, and
asserting myself against the people who behave as if all actresses had
done the things that Madame Desforêts has done. Don't think me narrow and
jealous. I should hate you and the Stuarts to think that of me. You have
all been so kind to me--such good, real friends! I shall never forget
this day--Oh! look, there is the carriage standing up there. I wish it
was the morning and not the evening, and that it might all come again! I