s
bending.

Mrs. Stuart did her duty bravely. Miss Bretherton had announced to her,
with a thousand regrets, that she had only half an hour to give. 'We poor
professionals, you know, must dine at four. That made me late, and now I
find I am such a long way from home that six is the latest moment I can
stay.' So that Mrs. Stuart was put to it to get through all the
introductions she had promised. But she performed her task without
flinching, killing remorselessly each nascent conversation in the bud,
giving artist, author, or member of Parliament his proper little sentence
of introduction, and at last beckoning to Eustace Kendal, who left his
corner feeling society to be a foolish business, and wishing the ordeal
were over.

Miss Bretherton smiled at him as she had smiled at all the others, and he
sat down for his three minutes on the chair beside her.

'I hear you are satisfied with your English audiences, Miss Bretherton,'
he began at once, having prepared himself so far. 'To-night I am to have
the pleasure for the first time of making one of your admirers.'

'I hope it will please you,' she said, with a shyness that was still
bright and friendly. 'You will be sure to come and see me afterwards? I
have been arranging it with Mrs. Stuart. I am never fit to talk to
afterwards, I get so tired. But it does one good to see one's friends; it
makes one forget the theatre a little before going home.'

'Do you find London very exciting?'

'Yes, very. People have been so extraordinarily kind to me, and it is all
such a new experience after that little place Kingston. I should have my
head turned, I think,' she added, with a happy little laugh, 'but that
when one cares about one's art one is not likely to think too much of
one's self. I am always despairing over what there is still to do, and
what one may have done seems to make no matter.'

She spoke with a pretty humility, evidently meaning what she said, and
yet there was such a delightful young triumph in her manner, such an
invulnerable consciousness of artistic success, that Kendal felt a secret
stir of amusement as he recalled the criticisms which among his own set
he had most commonly heard applied to her.

'Yes, indeed,' he answered pleasantly. 'I suppose every artist feels the
same. We all do if we are good for anything--we who scribble as well as
you who act.'

'Oh yes,' she said, with kindly, questioning eyes, 'you write a great
deal? I know; Mr. Wallace to