play is at once the easiest and the hardest to act--the
easiest because every audience understands it perfectly and
supplies unconsciously almost any defect in the acting; the
hardest because any actor with the education necessary to
acting well finds it next to impossible to divest himself or
herself of the sophistications of education and get back to
the elemental animal.

_Santuzza_ or _Lola_? Susan debated. _Santuzza_ was the big and
easy part; _Lola_, the smaller part, was of the kind that is
usually neglected. But Susan saw possibilities in the
character of the woman who won _Turiddu_ away--the triumphant
woman. The two women represented the two kinds of love--the
love that is serious, the love that is light. And experience
had taught her why it is that human nature soon tires of
intensity, turns to frivolity. She felt that, if she could
act, she would try to show that not _Turiddu's_ fickleness nor
his contempt of the woman who had yielded, but _Santuzza's_ sad
intensity and _Lola's_ butterfly gayety had cost _Santuzza_ her
lover and her lover his life. So, it was not _Santuzza's_ but
_Lola's_ first entrance that she studied.

In the next morning's mail, under cover addressed "Miss Susan
Lenox, care of Miss Lorna Sackville," as she had written it
for Brent, came the promised check for forty dollars. It was
signed John P. Garvey, Secretary, and was inclosed with a
note bearing the same signature:

DEAR MADAM:

Herewith I send you a check for forty dollars for the first
week's salary under your arrangement with Mr. Brent. No
receipt is necessary. Until further notice a check for the
same amount will be mailed you each Thursday. Unless you
receive notice to the contrary, please call as before, at
three o'clock next Wednesday.

It made her nervous to think of those five days before she
should see Brent. He had assured her he would expect nothing
from her; but she felt she must be able to show him that she
had not been wasting her time--his time, the time for which he
was paying nearly six dollars a day. She must work every
waking hour, except the two hours each day at the hospital.
She recalled what Brent had said about the advantage of being
contented alone--and how everything worth doing must be done
in solitude. She had never thought about her own feelings as
to company and solitude, as it was not her habit to think
about herself. But now she realized how solitary she had
been, and ho