sympathies. Now and again--but not often, for the theatrical
profession is generally Conservative--he came across a furious
Radical in the company and tasted the joy of fierce argument. Now
and again too, he came across a young woman of high modern
cultivation, and once or twice narrowly escaped wrecking his heart
on the Scylline rock of her intellect. It was only when he
discovered that she had lost her head over his romantic looks, and
not over his genius and his inherited right to leadership, that he
began to question her intellectual sincerity. And there is nothing
to send love scuttling away with his quiver between his legs like a
note of interrogation of that sort. The only touch of the morbid in
Paul was his resentment at owing anything to his mere personal
appearance. He could not escape the easy chaff of his fellows on his
"fatal beauty." He dreaded the horrible and hackneyed phrase which
every fresh intimacy either with man or woman would inevitably
evoke, and he hated it beyond reason. There was a tour during which
he longed for small-pox or a broken nose or facial paralysis, so
that no woman should ever look at him again and no man accuse him in
vulgar jest.

He played small utility parts and understudied the leading man. On
the rare occasions when he played the lead, he made no great hit.
The company did not, after the generous way of theatre folks,
surround him, when the performance was over, with a chorus of
congratulation. The manager would say, "Quite all' right, my boy, as
far as it goes, but still wooden. You must get more life into it."
And Paul, who knew himself to be a better man in every way than the
actor whose part he was playing, just as in his childhood days he
knew himself to be a better man than Billy Goodge, could not
understand the general lack of appreciation. Then he remembered the