Once, when she was more than usually earnest in pleading for her plan,—­not merely on the strength of her own deep, prophetic conviction of her fitness for a dramatic career, but on the ground of an urgent and bitter necessity for exertion on her part, to ward off actual destitution and suffering,—­he exclaimed, somewhat impatiently,—­“Why, Zelma, it is an impossibility, almost an absurdity, you urge!  You could never make an actress.  You are too hopelessly natural, erratic, and impulsive.  You would follow no teaching implicitly, but, when you saw fit, would trample on conventionalities and venerable stage-traditions.  You would set up the standard of revolt against the ancient canons of Art, and flout it in the faces of the critics, and—­fail,—­ay, fail, in spite of your great, staring eyes, the tragic weight of your brows, and the fiery swell of your nostril.”

“I should certainly tread my own ways on the boards, as elsewhere,” replied Zelma, quietly,—­“move and act from the central force, the instinct and inspiration of Nature,—­letting the passion of my part work itself out in its own gestures, postures, looks, and tones,—­falling short of, or going beyond, mere stage-traditions.  With all due deference for authorities, this would be my art, as it has been the art of all truly great actors.  I shall certainly not adopt my husband’s profession without his consent,—­but I shall never cease importuning him for that consent.”

Lawrence “laughed a laugh of merry scorn,” and left her to her solitary studies and the patient nursing of her purpose.

It was finally, for Zelma’s sake, through the unsolicited influence of Sir Harry Willerton, that “Mr. Lawrence Bury, Tragedian,” attained to a high point in a provincial actor’s ambition,—­a London engagement.

After a disheartening period of waiting and idleness, during which he and his wife made actual face-to-face acquaintance with want, and both came near playing their parts in the high-tragedy of starvation in a garret, he made his first appearance before the audience of Covent Garden, in the part of Mercutio.  He was young, shapely, handsome, and clever,—­full of flash and dash, and, above all, new.  He had chosen well his part,—­Mercutio,—­that graceful frolic of fancy, which less requires sustained intellectual power than the exaltation of animal spirits,—­that brief sunburst of life, that brilliant bubble of character, which reflects, for a moment, a world of beauty and sparkle, and dies in a flash of wit, yet leaves on the mind a want, a tender regret, which follow one through all the storm and woe of the tragedy.

So it was little wonder, perhaps, that he achieved a decided success, though incomparably greater artists had failed where he triumphed, and that, in spite of the doubtful looks and faint praise of the critics, he became at once a public favorite,—­the fashion, the rage.  Ladies of the highest ton condescended to admire and applaud, and hailed as a benefactor the creator of a new sensation.