of Henry Irving (then at his zenith) and the five hundred parts he had played before he came to London; he recalled also the failure of Disraeli’s first speech in the House of Commons and his triumphant prophecy.  He had dreams of that manager on his bended knees, imploring him, with prayerful hands and streaming eyes, to play Hamlet at a salary of a thousand a week and of himself haughtily snapping his fingers at the paltry fellow.

Well, which one of us who has ever dreamed at all has not had such dreams at twenty?  Let him cast at Paul the first stone.

And then, you must remember, Paul’s faith in his vague but glorious destiny was the dynamic force of his young life.  Its essential mystery kept him alert and buoyant.  His keen, self-centred mind realized that his search on the stage for the true expression of his genius was only empirical.  If he failed there, it was for him to try a hundred other spheres until he found the right one.  But just as in his childish days he could not understand why he was not supreme in everything, so now he could not appreciate the charge of wooden inferiority brought against him by theatrical managers.

He had been on the stage about three years when for the first time in his emancipated life something like a calamity befell him.  He lost Jane.  Like most calamities it happened in a foolishly accidental manner.  He received a letter from Jane during the last three weeks of a tour—­they always kept up an affectionate but desultory correspondence—­giving a new address.  The lease of her aunt’s house having fallen in, they were moving to the south side of London.  When he desired to answer the letter, he found he had lost it and could not remember the suburb, much less the street and number, whither Jane had migrated.  A letter posted to the old address was returned through the post.  The tour over, and he being again in London, he went on an errand of inquiry to Cricklewood, found the house empty and the neighbours and tradespeople ignorant.  The poorer classes of London in their migrations seldom leave a trail behind them.  Their correspondence being rare, it is not within their habits of life to fill up post-office forms with a view to the forwarding of letters.  He could not write to Jane because he did not in the least know where she was.

He reflected with dismay that Jane could, for the same reason, no longer write to him.  Ironic chance had so arranged that the landlady with whom he usually lodged in town, and whose house he used as a permanent address, had given up letting lodgings at the beginning of the tour, and had drifted into the limbo of London.  Jane’s only guide to his whereabouts had been the tour card which he had sent her as usual, giving dates and theatres.  And the tour was over.  On the chance that Jane, not hearing from him, should address a letter to the last theatre on the list, he communicated at once with the local management.  But as local managements of provincial theatres shape