es life on a large scale
possible, which makes the soldier, the lover, the saint, possible. Most
of us are only half alive. Our work is half dead. We deal in creep-mouse
sentiment, and call it love. We write pathetically of our impotence to
live, and call it resignation. We who have never been young, compare
notes with each other on how to remain senile, and call it the art of
growing old.

But others go through life, and spend themselves on it, piece by piece,
with ardour as they go. These are the teachers--only they never teach.
They know. If we want to learn anything, we can watch them. And some of
us, again--and this is the hardest fate of all--come into life
inadequately equipped, not provisioned for a prolonged journey. What
little we have, and what little there is of us, we expend on the first
part of life, and having nothing left for middle age.

Such a woman was Marion. She had talent, and she had, besides--as the
manager beside her had divined--one live play in her. But he doubted
whether she had more than one. She looked insolvent, a dweller in the
past, crippled by an acute memory. No doubt it was this self-regarding
memory which had resulted in the play. It was obviously a personal
experience, and as she was rich enough to share the risk of producing
it, he was more than ready to put it on. It was full of faults; it was
melodramatic, it was amateurish, but it was passionately alive. The pit
and the gallery would love it; and if the stalls found it a little
cheap, what of that? He had considerable _flair_. He believed it would
succeed.

He glanced once or twice furtively at the handsome, unhappy-looking,
richly furred woman beside him--no longer young, "past youth, but not
past passion," with much of the charm of youth lingering in her graceful
erectness, her pretty hair, her delicate pallor.

She had told him feverishly that the only thing she cared for--had ever
cared for--was art, success, fame. He had heard something like it often
before.

He wished, with a half-sigh, that a little of that uneasy, egotistic
ambition might have been instilled into the heart of Lenore, for whom
he had a compassionate, bottled-up attachment of many years' standing.

Poor Lenore! What an actress, and what a hopelessly womanly woman, still
mourning the providential demise of an impossible brother who had lived
on her.

She was on the stage now, looking about seventeen, all youth and garden
hat and white muslin.

Ma