‘You’ve seen her already, I believe,’ said Wallace to Forbes.  ’I think Miss Bretherton told me you were at the Calliope on Monday.’

’Yes, I was.  Well, as I tell you, I don’t care to be critical.  I don’t want to whittle away the few pleasures that this dull life can provide me with by this perpetual discontent with what’s set before one.  Why can’t you eat and be thankful?  To look at that girl is a liberal education; she has a fine voice too, and her beauty, her freshness, the energy of life in her, give me every sort of artistic pleasure.  What a curmudgeon I should be—­what a grudging, ungrateful fellow, if, after all she has done to delight me, I should abuse her because she can’t speak out her tiresome speeches—­which are of no account, and don’t matter, to my impression at all,—­as well as one of your thin, French, snake-like creatures who have nothing but their art, as you call it; nothing but what they have been carefully taught, nothing but what they have laboriously learnt with time and trouble, to depend upon!’

Having delivered himself of this tirade, the artist threw himself back in his chair, tossed back his gray hair from his glowing black eyes, and looked defiance at Kendal, who was sitting opposite.

‘But, after all,’ said Kendal, roused, ’these tiresome speeches are her metier; it’s her business to speak them, and to speak them well.  You are praising her for qualities which are not properly dramatic at all.  In your studio they would be the only thing that a man need consider; on the stage they naturally come second.’

‘Ah, well,’ said Forbes, falling to upon his dinner again at a gentle signal from Mrs. Stuart that the carriage would soon be round, ’I knew very well how you and Wallace would take her.  You and I will have to defend each other, Mrs. Stuart, against those two shower-baths, and when we go to see her afterwards I shall be invaluable, for I shall be able to save Kendal and Wallace the humbug of compliments.’

Whereupon the others protested that they would on no account be deprived of their share of the compliments, and Wallace especially laid it down that a man would be a poor creature who could not find smooth things to say upon any conceivable occasion to Isabel Bretherton.  Besides, he saw her every day, and was in excellent practice.  Forbes looked a little scornful, but at this point Mrs. Stuart succeeded in diverting his attention to his latest picture, and the dinner flowed on pleasantly till the coffee was handed and the carriage announced.

CHAPTER III

On their arrival at the theatre armed with Miss Bretherton’s order, Mrs. Stuart’s party found themselves shown into a large roomy box close to the stage—­too close, indeed, for purposes of seeing well.  The house was already crowded, and Kendal noticed, as he scanned the stalls and boxes through his opera-glass, that it contained a considerable sprinkling of notabilities of various kinds.  It was a large new theatre, which hitherto had enjoyed but a very moderate share of popular favour, so that the brilliant and eager crowd with which it was now filled was in itself a sufficient testimony to the success of the actress who had wrought so great a transformation.