ublic,
to the critics--in fact, to everybody except himself.

No, actresses should certainly not marry unless they marry actors, but
as a rule they do not, and will not.

The actor may be a hero to the susceptible matinee girl, who sees him as
Othello, Hamlet, Romeo, Henry V., d'Artagnan, or some other romantic
swashbuckler, but he is no hero to the woman who dwells in the
dressing-room next to his, and who knows that he is putting on his wig,
smearing his face with grease-paint, making-up his eyes, and covering
his face with violet-powder with a puff, which he handles in ladylike
manner. The actor loses in the eyes of an actress all the prestige which
is due to mystery and imagination, and which constitutes the primary
and fundamental element of the attraction of one sex for the other. I
have never met actresses of standing who had admiration for actors as
men, much as they might praise them as members of their profession.

Ninety-nine times out of a hundred the marriage of an actress is a
mistake, a remorse, or an act of folly. An actress, in order to
interpret the works of dramatists, should love, love passionately,
dream, suffer even terribly, in order to be able to incarnate love,
voluptuousness, suffering, and despair. The drama is the reflection of
humanity; the art of the actress should be the reflection of all the
different passions that have stirred her own heart and soul.

Another thing: The public takes a greater personal interest in a woman
who is not married than in one who is. Actresses know this so well that,
when they are married, they insist on having their names put on the
bills as Miss So-and-So. When they do not, managers make them do it.

For art's sake, for her own sake, and, remembering the remark of the
magistrate, I will add, for her husband's sake, an actress should not
marry.

CHAPTER XVI

A MATRIMONIAL BOOM

There is quite a boom in the French matrimonial market just at present,
and not marriages of convenience either, but real good love matches.
Young girls elope with respectable young men holding good positions in
order to compel their parents to give their consent. Sons now inform
their fathers and mothers that they have, without their help or even
their meddling, chosen wives for themselves. It is an open state of
rebellion against the old state of affairs in France.

Hitherto there were practically only two kinds of marriages among the
upper classes and the good bourg