declared. "I'm
assured by every one who knows that there's no other."

"Very correctly assured," said Mr. Nash. "The theatre in our countries
is puerile and barbarous."

"There's something to be done for it, and perhaps mademoiselle's the
person to do it," Sherringham contentiously suggested.

"Ah but, _en attendant_, what can it do for her?" Madame Carre asked.

"Well, anything I can help to bring about," said Peter Sherringham, more
and more struck with the girl's rich type. Miriam Rooth sat in silence
while this discussion went on, looking from one speaker to the other
with a strange dependent candour.

"Ah, if your part's marked out I congratulate you, mademoiselle!"--and
the old actress underlined the words as she had often underlined others
on the stage. She smiled with large permissiveness on the young
aspirant, who appeared not to understand her. Her tone penetrated,
however, to certain depths in the mother's nature, adding another stir
to agitated waters.

"I feel the responsibility of what she shall find in the life, the
standards, of the theatre," Mrs. Rooth explained. "Where is the purest
tone--where are the highest standards? That's what I ask," the good lady
continued with a misguided intensity which elicited a peal of
unceremonious but sociable laughter from Gabriel Nash.

"The purest tone--_qu'est-ce que c'est que ca_?" Madame Carre demanded
in the finest manner of modern comedy.

"We're very, _very_ respectable," Mrs. Rooth went on, but now smiling
and achieving lightness too.

"What I want is to place my daughter where the conduct--and the picture
of conduct in which she should take part--wouldn't be quite absolutely
dreadful. Now, _chere madame_, how about all that; how about _conduct_
in the French theatre--all the things she should see, the things she
should hear, the things she should learn?"

Her hostess took it, as Sherringham felt, _de tres-haut_. "I don't think
I know what you're talking about. They're the things she may see and
hear and learn everywhere; only they're better done, they're better
said, above all they're better taught. The only conduct that concerns
an, actress, it seems to me, is her own, and the only way for her to
behave herself is not to be a helpless stick. I know no other conduct."

"But there are characters, there are situations, which I don't think I
should like to see _her_ undertake."

"There are many, no doubt, which she would do well to leave alone!"
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