s companion to the girl, accompanying her to all rehearsals. They
were to live in a suite of rooms, opened for them in the house, with the
caretaker providing their meals.

It was all satisfactory to Isabelle. She remembered Miss Watts with
pleasure, and she proved an unobjectionable companion. She took a book
and read during rehearsals. She seemed interested in Isabelle's future.

The career was not exciting so far. The first real event was the day
Cartel came to rehearsal. Everybody was on tiptoe with excitement. The
stupid, mumbling thing they called the play suddenly took shape, and
point, and brilliancy. It infuriated Isabelle that her only chance lay
in a vagrant, unimportant line here and there, when she knew she could
play the lead, Mrs. Horton, with a dash and distinction totally lacking
in the performance of the actress who was to play it.

She told Cartel so, on one of the infrequent occasions when she saw him
to talk to. He laughed.

"The nerve of you kids!" he said. "You think the Lord has made you an
actress, don't you? All you need is a chance at a leading part, in order
to startle New York!"

Isabelle tried to reply, but he swept on.

"This is an Art; you want to desecrate a great, important Art! It takes
long years of preparation, hard labour, infinite patience, aching
disappointment; it takes brain, and passion, and intelligence to make an
actor. Now where do you come in?"

"Well, but you thought this summer----"

"I thought you were a clever little girl doing a sleight-of-hand
performance," was his crushing answer.

"But----"

"Can you dance? Can you fence? Can you run? Is your body as mobile and
lithe as an animal's? Do you breathe properly? Can you sing? Is your
voice a cultivated instrument with an octave and a half of tones, or
have you five tones at your command? Do you know how to fill a theatre
with a whisper? Can you carry your body with distinction? Can you sit
and rise with grace? Is your speech perfect?" He hurled the questions at
her.

"No," she admitted.

"Then you don't know the a-b-c's of this art. When you can say 'yes' to
all these questions, then you are ready to begin, and not until then.
Mind you--to _begin_!"

"But everybody on the stage cannot say 'yes' to all those things."

"No, worse luck! Because soft-hearted fools like me permit crude little
girls like you to speak a line without any excuse for so doing. We'll
have no great acting in America until we shut t