r respects--when it came to
interpretation or creation--she was spoilt by her entire want of that
inheritance from the past which is the foundation of all good work in the
present. For an actress must have one of the two kinds of knowledge: she
must have either the knowledge which comes from a fine training--in
itself the outcome of a long tradition--or she must have the knowledge
which comes from mere living, from the accumulations of personal thought
and experience. Miss Bretherton had neither. She had extraordinary beauty
and charm, and certainly, as Kendal admitted, some original quickness. He
was not inclined to go so far as to call it 'power.' But this quickness,
which would have been promising in a _debutante_ less richly endowed on
the physical side, seemed to him to have no future in her. 'It will be
checked,' he said to himself, 'by her beauty and all that flows from it.
She must come to depend more and more on the physical charm, and on that
only. The whole pressure of her success is and will be that way.'

Miss Bretherton's inadequacy, indeed, became more and more visible as the
play was gradually and finely worked up to its climax in the last act. In
the final scene of all, the Prince, who by a series of accidents has
discovered the Countess Hilda's plans, lies in wait for her in the
armoury, where he has reason to know she means to try the effect of a
third and last apparition upon the Princess. She appears; he suddenly
confronts her; and, dragging her forward, unveils before himself and the
Princess the death-like features of his old love. Recovering from the
shock of detection, the Countess pours out upon them both a fury of
jealous passion, sinking by degrees into a pathetic, trance-like
invocation of the past, under the spell of which the Prince's anger melts
away, and the little Princess's terror and excitement change into eager
pity. Then, when she sees him almost reconquered, and her rival weeping
beside her, she takes the poison phial from her breast, drinks it, and
dies in the arms of the man for whose sake she has sacrificed beauty,
character, and life itself.

A great actress could hardly have wished for a better opportunity. The
scene was so obviously beyond Miss Bretherton's resources that even the
enthusiastic house, Kendal fancied, cooled down during the progress of
it. There were signs of restlessness, there was even a little talking in
some of the back rows, and at no time during the scene