difficulties in deciding upon a play to begin my October season with,
and now this seems to me exactly what I want. People prefer me always in
something poetical and romantic, and this is new, and the mounting of it
might be quite original.'

'And yet I doubt,' said Kendal; 'I think the part of Elvira wants
variety, and would it not be well for you to have more of a change?
Something with more relief in it, something which would give your lighter
vein, which comes in so well in the _White Lady_, more chance?'

She frowned a little and shook her head. 'My turn is not that way. I can
play a comedy part, of course--every actor ought to be able to--but I
don't feel at home in it, and it never gives me pleasure to act.'

'I don't mean a pure light-comedy part, naturally, but something which
would be less of a continuous tragic strain than this. Why, almost all
the modern tragic plays have their passages of relief, but the texture
of _Elvira_ is so much the same throughout,--I cannot conceive a greater
demand on any one. And then you must consider your company. Frankly, I
cannot imagine a part less suited to Mr. Hawes than Macias; and his
difficulties would react on you.'

'I can choose whom I like,' she said abruptly; 'I am not bound to Mr.
Hawes.'

'Besides,' he said cautiously, changing his ground a little, 'I should
have said--only, of course, you must know much better--that it is a
little risky to give the British public such very serious fare as this,
and immediately after the _White Lady_. The English theatre-goer never
seems to me to take kindly to medievalism--kings and knights and nobles