hts. I dropped behind for some primroses still lingering in bloom
beside a little brook; she stayed too, and we were together, out of
ear-shot of the rest.

'"Mr. Kendal," she said, looking straight at me, as I handed the flowers
to her, "you may have misunderstood something just now. I don't want to
pretend to what I haven't got. I don't know French, and I can't read
French novels if I wished to ever so much."

'What was I to say? She stood looking at me seriously, a little proudly,
having eased her conscience, as it seemed to me, at some cost to herself.
I felt at first inclined to turn the thing off with a jest, but suddenly
I thought to myself that I too would speak my mind.

'"Well," I said deliberately, walking on beside her; "you lose a good
deal. There are hosts of French novels which I would rather not see a
woman touch with the tips of her fingers; but there are others, which
take one into a bigger world than we English people with our parochial
ways of writing and seeing have any notion of. George Sand carries you
full into the mid-European stream--you feel it flowing, you are brought
into contact with all the great ideas, all the big interests; she is an
education in herself. And then Balzac! he has such a range and breadth,
he teaches one so much of human nature, and with such conscience, such
force of representation! It's the same with their novels as with their
theatre. Whatever other faults he may have, a first-rate Frenchman of the
artistic sort takes more pains over his work than anybody else in the
world. They don't shirk, they throw their life-blood into it, whether
it's acting, or painting, or writing. You've never seen Desforets, I
think?--no, of course not, and you will be gone before she comes again.
What a pity!"

'Miss Bretherton picked one of my primroses ruthlessly to pieces, and
flung it away from her with one of her nervous gestures. "I am not
sorry," she said. "Nothing would have induced me to go and see her."

'"Indeed!" I said, waiting a little curiously for what she would say
next.

'"It's not that I am jealous of her," she exclaimed, with a quick proud
look at me; "not that I don't believe she's a great actress; but I can't
separate her acting from what she is herself. It is women like that who
bring discredit on the whole profession--it is women like that who make
people think that no good woman can be an actress. I resent it, and I
mean to take the other line. I want to prove,