“Ah, well,” said Miss White, as she put aside her bonnet, “I hope you won’t bring up Carry to this sort of life.”

“To what sort of life?” her father exclaimed, angrily.  “Haven’t you everything that can make life pleasant?  I don’t know what more you want.  You have not a single care.  You are petted and caressed wherever you go.  And you ought to have the delight of knowing that the further you advance in your art the further rewards are in store for you.  The way is clear before you.  You have youth and strength; and the public is only too anxious to applaud whatever you undertake.  And yet you complain of your manner of life.”

“It isn’t the life of a human being at all,” she said, boldly—­but perhaps it was only her headache, or her weariness, or her ill-humor, that drove her to this rebellion; “it is the cutting one’s self off from everything that makes life worth having.  It is a continual degradation—­the exhibition of feelings that ought to be a woman’s most sacred and secret possession.  And what will the end of it be?  Already I begin to think I don’t know what I am.  I have to sympathize with so many characters—­I have to be so many different people—­that I don’t quite know what my own character is, or if I have any at all—­”

Her father was staring at her in amazement.  What had led her into these fantastic notions?  While she was professing that her ambition to become a great and famous actress was the one ruling thought and object of her life, was she really envying the poor domestic drudge whom she saw coming to the theatre to enjoy herself with her fool of a husband, having withdrawn for an hour or two from her housekeeping books and her squalling children?  At all events, Miss White left him in no doubt as to her sentiments at that precise moment.  She talked rapidly, and with a good deal of bitter feeling; but it was quite obvious, from the clearness of her line of contention, that she had been thinking over the matter.  And while it was all a prayer that her sister Carry might be left to live a natural life, and that she should not be compelled to exhibit, for gain or applause, emotions which a woman would naturally lock up in her own heart, it was also a bitter protest against her own lot.  What was she to become, she asked?  A dram-drinker of fictitious sentiment?  A Ten-minutes’ Emotionalist?  It was this last phrase that flashed in a new light on her father’s bewildered mind.  He remembered it instantly.  So that was the source of inoperation?

“Oh, I see now,” he said, with angry scorn.  “You have learned your lesson well.  A ‘Ten-minutes’ Emotionalist:’  I remember.  I was wondering who had put such stuff into your head.”

She colored deeply, but said nothing.