the sensation of the evening, of many subsequent evenings; and I
have often wondered precisely why--for there is in it nothing
sensational. Its atmosphere is delicately fantastic; remote, you would
say, from the sympathies of a matter-of-fact world, particularly as its
fantasy is not the highly sentimentalized make-believe of some popular
fairy tale. This fantasy of Susan's is ironic and grave; simple in
movement, too--just a few subtle modulations on a single poignant theme.
And I ask myself wherein lies its throat-tightening quality, its
irresistible appeal? And I find but one answer; an answer which I had
always supposed, in my long intellectual snobbery, an undeserved
compliment to the human race; a compliment no critic, who was not either
dishonest or a fool, could pay mankind.

But what other explanation can be given for the success of Susan's play,
both here and in England, than its sheer _beauty_? Beauty of substance,
of mood, of form, of quiet, heart-searching phrase! It is not called
"The Magic Circle," but it might have been; for its magic is genuine,
distilled from the depths of Nature, and it casts an unescapable
spell--on poets and bankers, on publicans and prostitutes and priests,
on all and sundry, equally and alike. It even casts its spell on those
who act in it, and no truer triumph can come to an author. I have never
seen it really badly played. Susan has never seen it played at all.

On the first wave of this astonishing triumph, Susan's pen-name was
swept into the newspapers and critical journals of America and England,
and a piquant point for gossip was added by the revelation that "Dax,"
who for several months had so wittily enlivened the columns of _Whim_,
was one and the same person. Moreover, it was soon bruited about that
the author was a slip of a girl--radiantly beautiful, of course; or why
romance concerning her!--and that there was something mysterious, even
sinister, in her history.

"A child of the underworld," said one metropolitan journal, in its
review of her poems. Popular legend presently connected her, though
vaguely, with the criminal classes. I have heard an overdressed woman in
a theater lobby earnestly assuring another that she knew for a fact that
---- (Susan) had been born in a brothel--"one of those houses, my
dear"--and brought up--like Oliver Twist, though the comparison escaped
her--to be a thief.

And so it was that the public eye lighted for a little hour on Susan's