d the others on the stage? Why does she talk always
and always to you, when she has nothing to say?"

"Oh, but she finds plenty to say!" he observed.

"Yes," said Nina, contemptuously, "she has always plenty to say to you
on the stage, if she has not a word the moment the scene is over. Why?
You don't understand! You don't reflect! I will tell you, Leo, if you
are so simple. You think she does not know that the public can see she
talks to you? She knows it well; and that is why she talks. It is to
boast of her friendship with you, her alliance with you. She says to the
ladies in the stalls, 'See here, I can talk to him when I please--you
are away--you are outside.' It is her vanity. She says to them, 'You can
buy his portrait out of the shop-window perhaps--you can ask him to your
house perhaps--and he goes for an hour, among strangers--but see
here--every night I am talking to him'--"

"Yes, and see here, Nina," he said, with a laugh, "how about my
vanity?--don't you think of that? Who could have imagined I was so
important a person! But the truth is, Nina, they've lengthened out that
comic scene inordinately with all that gagging, and Miss Burgoyne has
nothing to do in it; if she hides her talking behind her fan--"

"Hides?" said Nina, with just a trace of scorn. "No; she shows! It is
display! It is vanity! And you think a true artist would so forget her
part--would wish to show the people that she talks privately--"

"Miss Nina is quite right, you know, Mr. Moore," said the little widow
in black, and she was entitled to speak with authority. "I didn't think
it looked well myself. A ballet-girl would catch it if she went on the
same way."

"What would you have her do?" he said--for he was a very tolerant and
good-natured person. "Sit and look on at that idiotic comic gag?"

"Certainly," said the little dame, with decision. "She is in the scene.
She is not Miss Burgoyne; she is Grace Mainwaring; and she ought to
appear interested in everything around her."

"Oh, well, perhaps I have been to blame," he said, rather uneasily. "I
dare say I encouraged her. But really I had no idea the audience could
have noticed it."

"It was meant for them to notice it," Nina said, vindictively; and then,
as she would have nothing more to say on this wretched subject, she
turned to look at the gay lilacs and laburnums in the neighborhood of
the Serpentine, at the shimmering blue of the wide stretch of water, and
at the fleet of