I grew pale, and thin, and dispirited. I knew the ladies of our
company made nasty remarks about me. One day I overheard two of them
talking.

"She never was much of an actress, and now she merely walks through
her part. They never had any feeling for art, not one of those
Gascoigne girls."

No feeling for art! What a low, mean, spiteful, wicked thing to say.
And the worst of it was that it was so true.

I resolved at once that I would do something desperate. The last
piece brought out at our theatre had been a "frost." It had dragged
along until the advertisements were able to announce "Fifteenth Night
of the Great Realistic Drama." And various scathing paragraphs from
the papers were pruned down and weeded till they seemed unstinted
praise. Thus: "It was not the fault of the management that the new
play was so far from being a triumphant success," was cut down to one
modest sentence, "A triumphant success." "A few enthusiastic cheers
from personal friends alone broke the ominous silence when the
curtain fell," became briefly "Enthusiastic cheers."

But nobody was deceived. One week the public were informed that they
could book their seats a month in advance; the next that the
successful drama had to be withdrawn at the height of its popularity,
owing to other arrangements. What the other arrangements were to be
our manager was at his wit's end to decide. There only wanted three
weeks to the close of the season. Fired with a wild ambition born of
suspense and disappointment, I suggested that Shakespeare should fill
the breach. "Romeo and Juliet," with me, Sybil Gascoigne, as the