'I hear you are satisfied with your English audiences, Miss Bretherton,' he began at once, having prepared himself so far. 'To-night I am to have the pleasure for the first time of making one of your admirers.'

'I hope it will please you,' she said, with a shyness that was still bright and friendly. 'You will be sure to come and see me afterwards? I have been arranging it with Mrs. Stuart. I am never fit to talk to afterwards, I get so tired. But it does one good to see one's friends; it makes one forget the theatre a little before going home.'

'Do you find London very exciting?'

'Yes, very. People have been so extraordinarily kind to me, and it is all such a new experience after that little place Kingston. I should have my head turned, I think,' she added, with a happy little laugh, 'but that when one cares about one's art one is not likely to think too much of one's self. I am always despairing over what there is still to do, and what one may have done seems to make no matter.'

She spoke with a pretty humility, evidently meaning what she said, and yet there was such a delightful young triumph in her manner, such an invulnerable consciousness of artistic success, that Kendal felt a secret stir of amusement as he recalled the criticisms which among his own set he had most commonly heard applied to her.

'Yes, indeed,' he answered pleasantly. 'I suppose every artist feels the same. We all do if we are good for anything—we who scribble as well as you who act.'

'Oh yes,' she said, with kindly, questioning eyes, 'you write a great deal? I know; Mr. Wallace told me. He says you are so learned, and that your book will be splendid. It must be grand to write books. I should like it, I think, better than acting. You need only depend on yourself; but in acting you're always depending on some one else, and you get in such a rage when all your own grand ideas are spoilt because the leading gentleman won't do anything different from what he has been used to, or the next lady wants to show off, or the stage manager has a grudge against you! Something always happens.'

'Apparently the only thing that always happens to you is success,' said Kendal, rather hating himself for the cheapness of the compliment. 'I hear wonderful reports of the difficulty of getting a seat at the Calliope; and his friends tell me that Mr. Robinson looks ten years younger. Poor man! it is time that fortune smiled on him.'

'Yes, indeed; he had a bad time last year. That Miss Harwood, the American actress, that they thought would be such a success, didn't come off at all. She didn't hit the public. It doesn't seem to me that the English public is hard to please. At that wretched little theatre in Kingston I wasn't nearly so much at my ease as I am here. Here one can always do one's best and be sure that the audience will appreciate it. I have all sorts of projects in my head. Next year I shall have a theatre of my own, I think, and then—'

'And then we shall see you in all the great parts?'