to accomplish, every moment straddled with
calculation, an end to all the byways where one finds the colour of the
sun. The successful London actress, my dear--what existence has she? A
straight flight across the Atlantic in a record-breaker, so many nights
in New York, so many in Chicago, so many in a Pullman car, and the net
result in every newspaper--an existence of pure artificiality infested
by reporters. It's like living in the shell of your personality. It's
the house for ever on your back; at the last you are buried in it,
smirking in your coffin with a half-open eye on the floral offerings.
There never was reward so qualified by its conditions."

"Surely there would be some moments of splendid compensation?"

"Oh yes; and for those in the end we are all willing to perish! But then
you know all, you have done all; there is nothing afterwards but the
eternal strain to keep even with yourself. I don't suppose I could
begin to make you see the joys of a strolling player--they aren't much
understood even in the profession--but there are so many, honestly, that
London being at the top of the hill, I'm not panting up. My way of
going has twice wound round the world already. But I'm talking like an
illustrated interview. You will grant the impertinence of all I've
been saying when I tell you that I've never yet had an illustrated
interview."

"Aren't they almost always vulgar?" Alicia asked. "Don't they make you
sit the wrong way on a chair, in tights?"

Hilda threw her head back and laughed, almost, Alicia noted, like a man.
She certainly did not hide her mouth with her hands or her handkerchief,
as women often do in bursts of hilarity; she laughed freely, and as much
as she wanted to, and it was as clear as possible that tights presented
themselves quite preposterously to any discussion of her profession.
They were things to be taken for granted, like the curtain and the
wings; they had no relation to clothing in the world.

Alicia laughed too. After all, they were absurd--her outsider's
prejudices. She said something like that, and Hilda seemed to soar
again for her point of view about the illustrated interviews. "They ARE
atrocities," she said. "On their merits they ought to be cast out
of even the suburbs of art and literature. But they help to make
the atmosphere that gives us power to work, and if they do that,
of course--" and the pursed seriousness of her lips gave Alicia the
impression that, though the w