rving--much better--I'll rough it out at once!"

When the orchestra played the new version, based on that humming of
Henry's, it was exactly what he wanted!

Knowing what a task I had before me, I began to get anxious and worried
about "Lady Mac." Henry wrote me such a nice letter about this:

"To-night, if possible, the last act. I want to get these great
multitudinous scenes over and then we can attack _our_ scenes....
Your sensitiveness is so acute that you must suffer sometimes. You
are not like anybody else--see things with such lightning quickness
and unerring instinct that dull fools like myself grow irritable
and impatient sometimes. I feel confused when I'm thinking of one
thing, and disturbed by another. That's all. But I do feel very
sorry afterwards when I don't seem to heed what I so much value....

"I think things are going well, considering the time we've been at
it, but I see so much that is wanting that it seems almost
impossible to get through properly. 'To-night commence, Matthias.
If you sleep, you are lost!'"[1]

[Footnote 1: A quotation from "The Bells."]

At this time we were able to be of the right use to each other. Henry
could never have worked with a very strong woman. I might have
deteriorated, in partnership with a weaker man whose ends were less
fine, whose motives were less pure. I had the taste and artistic
knowledge that his upbringing had not developed in him. For years he did
things to please me. Later on I gave up asking him. In "King Lear" Mrs.
Nettleship made him a most beautiful cloak, but he insisted on wearing a
brilliant purple velvet cloak with spangles all over it which swamped
his beautiful make-up and his beautiful acting. Poor Mrs. Nettleship was
almost in tears.

"I'll never make you anything again--never!"

One of Mrs. "Nettle's" greatest triumphs was my Lady Macbeth dress,
which she carried out from Mrs. Comyns Carr's design. I am glad to think
it is immortalized in Sargent's picture. From the first I knew that
picture was going to be splendid. In my diary for 1888 I was always
writing about it:

"The picture of me is nearly finished, and I think it magnificent.
The green and blue of the dress is splendid, and the expression as
Lady Macbeth holds the crown over her head is quite wonderful.

"Henschel is sitting to Sargent. His concerts, I hear, can't be
carried on another year