"If 'Daisy' isn't a child when she marries, the play has no meaning, no sense. That is why the character was so difficult to cast—in the first act she must be a school-girl, and in the others an emotional woman."
"Perhaps I said too much."
"You are a critic, Mrs. Heriot."
"Oh, merely——"
"Merely?"
"Merely very interested in the stage."
"To be interested in the stage is very ordinary; to be a judge of it is rather rare. No, you didn't say too much: Miss Millington doesn't fulfil my idea when she accepts 'Captain Arminger.' And to be frank, I haven't fulfilled Miss Millington's idea of a consistent part."
"I can understand," said Mamie, "that the great drawback to writing for the stage is that one depends so largely on one's interpreters. A novelist succeeds or fails by himself, but a dramatist——"
"A dramatist is the most miserable of created beings," said Field, "if he happens to be an artist."
"I can hardly credit that. I can't credit anybody being miserable who is an artist." (He laughed. It was not polite, but he couldn't help it.) "Though I can understand his having moods of the most frightful depression!" she added.