was a brilliant critic and
adviser._] And I know how my own lines and business ought to be
rendered infinitely better than any one else, except the
Omniscient. It is only on this narrow ground I presume to teach a
woman of your gifts. If I teach you Philippa, you will teach me
Juliet; for I am very sure that when I have seen you act her, I
shall know a vast deal more about her than I do at present.

"No great quality of an actress is absent from your performance.
Very often you have _vigor_. But in other places where it is as
much required, or even more, you turn _limp_. You have limp lines,
limp business, and in Act III. limp exits instead of ardent exits."

Except in the actual word used, he was perfectly right. I was not
_limp_, but I was exhausted. By a natural instinct, I had produced my
voice scientifically almost from the first, and I had found out for
myself many things, which in these days of Delsarte systems and the
science of voice-production, are taught. But when, after my six years'
absence from the stage, I came back, and played a long and arduous part,
I found that my breathing was still not right. This accounted for my
exhaustion, or limpness and lack of vigor, as Charles Reade preferred to
call it.

As for the "ardent" exits, how right he was! That word set me on the
track of learning the value of moving off the stage with a swift rush. I
had always had the gift of being rapid in movement, but to _have_ a
gift, and to _use_ it, are two very different things.

I never realized that I was rather quick in movement until one day when
I was sitting on a sofa talking to the famous throat specialist, Dr.
Morell Mackenzie. In the middle of one of his sentences I said: "Wait a
minute while I get a glass of water." I was out of the room and back so
soon that he said, "Well, go and get it then!" and was paralyzed when he
saw that the glass was in my hand and that I was sitting down again!

_Consider!_ That was one of Charles Reade's favorite expressions, and
just hearing him say the word used to make me consider, and think, and
come to conclusions--perhaps not always the conclusions that he wished,
but suggested by him.

In this matter of "ardent" exit, he wrote:

"The swift rush of the words, the personal rush, should carry you
off the stage. It is in reality as easy as shelling peas, if you
will only go by the right method instead of by the