‘On the contrary; it is the very thing I have been looking for all along. It is nice to feel when the public applaud an actress that she is your own; but how much nicer to feel as I do now,’ said Wentworth, with a loving caress, ‘that she is all my own! You were happy on the stage; you will be ten times happier off it.’
‘Ah, that I know well enough.’
‘I fancy you little people of the mimic world are rather inclined to overrate your importance. By the side of it the editorial “we” is modesty itself. You actors and actresses are not such great folk after all. Admired one day, forgotten the next! As I think of all the men and women I have known upon the stage, who were lions of their day, for whom the public went into fits of madness, and then see how completely they are forgotten, it has always seemed to me that to illustrate the vanity of life and the nothingness of human applause I should point to the stage.’
One morning there came the manager of the theatre.
‘No, I shall never go back to the stage,’ replied the actress.
‘Why not, my dear?’ said the manager, a gentleman of showy manners, and suspected of being rather over-sweet.
‘Because I don’t like the life behind the scenes.’
‘I am surprised to hear that. If you knew how young ladies of really good position bother me to give them a trial!’
‘Ah, they are ignorant.’
‘Yes,’ said the manager; ‘remember the old lines: