that play; it's one of the few good things that have been done for the
English stage for a long time past. It's well put together, the plot
good, three or four strongly marked characters, and some fine Victor
Hugoish dialogue, especially in the last act. But there is extravagance
in it, as there is in all the work of that time, and in Isabel
Bretherton's hands a great deal of it would be grotesque: nothing would
save it but her reputation and the get-up, and that would be too great
a shame. No, no; it will not do to have the real thing swamped by all
sorts of irrelevant considerations in this way. I like Miss Bretherton
heartily, but I like good work, and if I can save the play from her, I
shall save her too from what everybody with eyes in his head would see to
be a failure!'

It was a rash determination. Most men would have prudently left the
matter to those whom it immediately concerned, but Kendal had a Quixotic
side to him, and at this time in his life a whole-hearted devotion to
certain intellectual interests, which decided his action on a point like
this. In spite of his life in society, books and ideas were at this
moment much more real to him than men and women. He judged life from the
standpoint of the student and the man of letters, in whose eyes
considerations, which would have seemed abstract and unreal to other
people, had become magnified and all-important. In this matter of Wallace
and Miss Bretherton he saw the struggle between an ideal interest, so to
speak, and a personal interest, and he was heart and soul for the ideal.
Face to face with the living human creature concerned, his principles, as
we have seen, were apt to give way a little, for the self underneath was
warm-hearted and impressionable, but in his own room and by himself they
were strong and vigorous, and would allow of no compromise.

He ruminated over the matter during his solitary meal, planning his line