His reflections, however, were stopped by the exclamations of the girls beside him, who were already warm admirers of Miss Bretherton, and wild with enthusiasm at finding themselves in the same room with her.  They discovered that he was going to see her in the evening; they envied him, they described the play to him, they dwelt in superlatives on the crowded state of the theatre and on the plaudits which greeted Miss Bretherton’s first appearance in the ballroom scene in the first act, and they allowed themselves—­being aesthetic damsels robed in sober greenish-grays—­a gentle lament over the somewhat violent colouring of one of the actress’s costumes, while all the time keeping their eyes furtively fixed on the gleaming animated profile and graceful shoulders over which, in the entrance of the second drawing-room, the Minister’s gray head was bending.

Mrs. Stuart did her duty bravely.  Miss Bretherton had announced to her, with a thousand regrets, that she had only half an hour to give.  ’We poor professionals, you know, must dine at four.  That made me late, and now I find I am such a long way from home that six is the latest moment I can stay.’  So that Mrs. Stuart was put to it to get through all the introductions she had promised.  But she performed her task without flinching, killing remorselessly each nascent conversation in the bud, giving artist, author, or member of Parliament his proper little sentence of introduction, and at last beckoning to Eustace Kendal, who left his corner feeling society to be a foolish business, and wishing the ordeal were over.

Miss Bretherton smiled at him as she had smiled at all the others, and he sat down for his three minutes on the chair beside her.

‘I hear you are satisfied with your English audiences, Miss Bretherton,’ he began at once, having prepared himself so far.  ’To-night I am to have the pleasure for the first time of making one of your admirers.’

‘I hope it will please you,’ she said, with a shyness that was still bright and friendly.  ’You will be sure to come and see me afterwards?  I have been arranging it with Mrs. Stuart.  I am never fit to talk to afterwards, I get so tired.  But it does one good to see one’s friends; it makes one forget the theatre a little before going home.’

‘Do you find London very exciting?’

’Yes, very.  People have been so extraordinarily kind to me, and it is all such a new experience after that little place Kingston.  I should have my head turned, I think,’ she added, with a happy little laugh, ’but that when one cares about one’s art one is not likely to think too much of one’s self.  I am always despairing over what there is still to do, and what one may have done seems to make no matter.’

She spoke with a pretty humility, evidently meaning what she said, and yet there was such a delightful young triumph in her manner, such an invulnerable consciousness of artistic success, that Kendal felt a secret stir of amusement as he recalled the criticisms which among his own set he had most commonly heard applied to her.