“Surely there would be some moments of splendid compensation?”

“Oh yes; and for those in the end we are all willing to perish!  But then you know all, you have done all; there is nothing afterwards but the eternal strain to keep even with yourself.  I don’t suppose I could begin to make you see the joys of a strolling player—­they aren’t much understood even in the profession—­but there are so many, honestly, that London being at the top of the hill, I’m not panting up.  My way of going has twice wound round the world already.  But I’m talking like an illustrated interview.  You will grant the impertinence of all I’ve been saying when I tell you that I’ve never yet had an illustrated interview.”

“Aren’t they almost always vulgar?” Alicia asked.  “Don’t they make you sit the wrong way on a chair, in tights?”

Hilda threw her head back and laughed, almost, Alicia noted, like a man.  She certainly did not hide her mouth with her hands or her handkerchief, as women often do in bursts of hilarity; she laughed freely, and as much as she wanted to, and it was as clear as possible that tights presented themselves quite preposterously to any discussion of her profession.  They were things to be taken for granted, like the curtain and the wings; they had no relation to clothing in the world.

Alicia laughed too.  After all, they were absurd—­her outsider’s prejudices.  She said something like that, and Hilda seemed to soar again for her point of view about the illustrated interviews.  “They are atrocities,” she said.  “On their merits they ought to be cast out of even the suburbs of art and literature.  But they help to make the atmosphere that gives us power to work, and if they do that, of course—­” and the pursed seriousness of her lips gave Alicia the impression that, though the whole world took offence, the expediency of the illustrated interview was beyond discussion.

The servant brought them coffee.  “Shall we smoke here,” said Miss Livingstone, “or in the drawing-room?”

“Oh, do you want to?  Are you quite sure you like it?  Please don’t on my account—­you really mustn’t.  Suppose it should mike you ill?” If Hilda felt any tinge of amusement she kept it out of her face.  Nothing was there but cheerful concern.

“It won’t make me ill.”  Alicia lifted her chin with delicate assertiveness.  “I suppose you do smoke, don’t you?”

“Occasionally—­with some people.  Honestly, have you ever done it before?”

“Four times,” said Alicia, and then turned rose-colour with the apprehension that it sounded amateurish to have counted them.  “I thought it was one of your privileges to do it always, just as you—­”

“Go to bed with our boots on and put ice down the back of some Serene Highness’s neck.  I suppose it is, but now and then I prefer to dispense with it.  In my bath, for instance, and almost always in omnibuses.”