beforehand whether I should succeed;
but that seems to me a reason why I should try. I should have thought
that I might have taken an engagement at a theatre meanwhile, so as to
earn money and study at the same time."

"Can't be done, my dear Miss Harleth--I speak plainly--it can't be
done. I must clear your mind of these notions which have no more
resemblance to reality than a pantomime. Ladies and gentlemen think
that when they have made their toilet and drawn on their gloves they
are as presentable on the stage as in a drawing-room. No manager thinks
that. With all your grace and charm, if you were to present yourself as
an aspirant to the stage, a manager would either require you to pay as
an amateur for being allowed to perform or he would tell you to go and
be taught--trained to bear yourself on the stage, as a horse, however
beautiful, must be trained for the circus; to say nothing of that study
which would enable you to personate a character consistently, and
animate it with the natural language of face, gesture, and tone. For
you to get an engagement fit for you straight away is out of the
question."

"I really cannot understand that," said Gwendolen, rather
haughtily--then, checking herself, she added in another tone--"I shall
be obliged to you if you will explain how it is that such poor
actresses get engaged. I have been to the theatre several times, and I
am sure there were actresses who seemed to me to act not at all well
and who were quite plain."

"Ah, my dear Miss Harleth, that is the easy criticism of the buyer. We
who buy slippers toss away this pair and the other as clumsy; but there
went an apprenticeship to the making of them. Excuse me; you could not
at present teach one of those actresses; but there is certainly much
that she could teach you. For example, she can pitch her voice so as to
be heard: ten to one you could not do it till after many trials. Merely
to stand and move on the stage is an art--requires practice. It is
understood that we are not now talking of a _comparse_ in a petty
theatre who earns the wages of a needle-woman. That is out of the
question for you."

"Of course I must earn more than that," said Gwendolen, with a sense of
wincing rather than of being refuted, "but I think I could soon learn
to do tolerably well all those little things you have mentioned. I am
not so very stupid. And even in Paris, I am sure, I saw two actresses
playing important ladies' parts who were n