ed with a pale
blue sash and little side pocket, completed the costume, I prepared for
the character. I was beginning to understand, as I studied her, and
shamefacedly--to love!

Oh, yes, one often feels dislike or liking for the creature one is trying
to represent. Just at first I said to myself, here is a modern _Ophelia_,
but I was soon convinced that the innocence of _Alixe_ was far more
perfect than had been that of Shakespeare's weakling, who, through the
training of court life, the warnings of a shrewd brother, and the
admonitions of a tricky father, had learned many things--was ductile in
stronger hands and could play a part; could lead a lover on to speech,
without giving slightest hint of the hateful watching eyes she knew were
upon him.

Poor "Rose of May," whose sweetness comes to us across the ages! As the
garden-spider's air-spun silken thread is cast from bough to twig across
the path, so her fragile thread of life looped itself from father to
lover, to brother, to queen, and all the web was threaded thick with
maiden's tears, made opalescent by rosy love, green hope, and violet
despair. But each one she clung to raised a hand to brush the fragile
thing aside, and so destroyed it utterly. Yet that tangled wreck of
beauty, sweetness, and "a young maid's wits," remains one of the world's
dearest possessions--the fair _Ophelia_!

But this modern maid was yet unspotted by the world. She found all earth
perfect, as though God had just completed it, and loved ardently and
without shame, as the innocent do love. For this pure flower of crime
was ignorant, to the point of bliss, of evil in the world about her.
While her adored mother was to her as the blessed Madonna herself.

More and more convincing, as I carefully studied the part, became that
perfect innocence. Not cold or reserved, but alive with faith, quivering,
too, with girlish mirth, yet innocent. And as with roots deep in rankest,
blackest ooze and mud, the lily sends up into the sunlit air its
stainless, white-petaled blossom, to float in golden-hearted beauty upon
the surface of the stream, so all sweet and open-hearted _Alixe_ floated
into view.

And I was expected to act a part like that! I worried day and night over
it. Should I do this, should I do that? No--no! she was not
coy--detestable word. I recalled the best _Ophelia_ I had ever seen--a
German actress. Would she do for a model? Perhaps--no! she was mystic,
strange, aloof!

Oh, dear