nd composed as
the chorus around her and her voice was as beautiful as I have ever
heard it.

"The child was born for the stage, there is no doubt!" Sue whispered
to me excitedly, and I nodded hastily, not wishing to lose a note or a
movement.

It was her best-known part and she was very lovely and magnetic in it,
but I do not think it really suited her so well as the Wagner dramas
would have, later. It is with _Marguerite_ as a great English
comedienne expressed it to me some years later, of _Juliet_: one must
be forty to play it properly--and then one is too old to play it
properly!

But what a gait she had! Her stride just fitted the stage, her
carriage of neck and head was such as great artists have worked years
to attain--and she was unconscious of it. Her eyes looked sky-blue
under the blonde wig, and the blonde tints were lovely, if not so
fascinatingly surprising as her own.

When she stopped, fixed her great eyes upon _Faust_ reproachfully and
sang, like a sweet, truthful child,

_Non, monsieur, je ne suis belle!
Ni belle, ni demoiselle...._

a little sigh of pleasure ran through the audience: she won them then
and there. It seemed incredible that she was acting--it seemed that
she must be real and that the others were trying to surround her with
the reality she expected, as best they could. She had the sweet
purity of tone--the candour, if I may so call it, often associated
with delicate, small voices and singers of cool, rather inexpressive
temperaments. But _Bruenhilde_ was the part for her, and _Bruenhilde_
was not cool and anything but inexpressive.

The only _Marguerite_ I have ever seen since that resembled hers was
Mme Calve's, and the French artist seemed studied and conscious beside
Margarita. You see, she _was_ young, she _was_ sincere and ingenuous,
she _was_ slender and beautiful--and she had a fresh and lovely voice,
well trained, into the bargain. She would never have made a great
coloratura soprano. Neither her voice nor her temperament inclined to
this. She belonged, properly speaking, to the advance guard of the
natural method, the school of intelligence and subtle dramatic skill.
I cannot imagine Margarita a stout, tightly laced, high-heeled
creature, advancing to the footlights, jewelled finger-tips on massive
chest, emitting a series of _staccato_ fireworks interspersed with
trills and scales apropos of nothing in this world or the next.

Such performances constituted Ro