"Do you think I look like Langtry?" she asked. "Lots of people have noticed the resemblance. Of course, I don't know, but I can't help believing what people tell me. There's a young gentleman who crossed on the same steamer with Langtry, and he says I'm the very image of her—only more spiritual."
The Youngest Teacher had found her clew. She was sitting beside an embryonic tragedy queen, a histrionic genius in the rough.
"Well, you're near Langtry's size," she admitted, "and the shape of your face is something like hers."
Adelina relaxed her pose.
"Yes, I guess it's so. At first I wasn't very well suited, I'd hoped I'd be more like Bernhardt. I just adore the thin, mysterious, snaky kind, don't you? I think those serpentine, willowy, tigerish, squirmy actresses are perfectly splendid. They're so fascinating, and they can wear such lovely, queer clothes. I wouldn't have minded being like Mrs. Pat Campbell, either. There's something awfully taking about that hollow-chested, loppy sort of woman. But you just can't choose what you'll look like. I got long enough for anything, but then I just began to spread out and get fat, and there wasn't any stopping it, so I had to give up any idea of being the willowy kind. I was awfully disappointed for a while, and I hardly ate anything for months, trying to stay thin, but it didn't make a bit of difference. I kept right on getting fat just the same. After all, it isn't shape that counts so much if you've got genius. Mary Anderson's pictures look awfully healthy, and I know lots of folks think Langtry's finer than Bernhardt. Which do you like best?"
Belinda diplomatically evaded the question. "You hope to go on the stage?" she asked.
Adelina lapsed into tragedy. "I'd die if I couldn't. I was just born for the stage. Papa and the boys don't seem to understand. They think I'm silly, stage-struck, like girls who go on in the chorus and are Amazons and things. I can't make them see that I'm going to be a star, and that being a great actress is an entirely different thing from being an Amazon. Folks up home are all so dreadfully narrow. A genius hardly ever gets sympathy in her own home, though. I've read lots of lives that showed that—but you can't keep real genius down."
The retiring bell rang.
Belinda rose with alacrity.
In her own room, with the door closed behind her, she gave way to unseemly mirth. Then she sallied forth to tell Miss Barnes of the young Rachel within their gates; but there was a troubled look from between her twinkling eyes.