own person he had achieved, shocked Clara out of her
youthful innocence and into a painful realisation that the facts of her
life forbade the impersonalism which had made so much achievement
possible.... It was quite clear to her that Sir Henry was intent upon
a personal relationship if she were to keep what she had won, and it
was as clear that he could not credit her, or Charles, or anybody else
with any other motive than personal ambition. He knew his world, he
knew his theatre. A fulfilled ambition has its price, and he had never
yet met the successful man or woman who did not pay with a good grace,
as he himself had done.

Her brain worked quickly on this new intractable material, this
disconcerting revelation of the fact that success and art are in the
modern world two very different things, the one belonging to the crowd,
the other to solitude.... This old man might have waited. He might
have given her her chance. It was not true. She would not accept that
it could be true that she could only have her success at his price, the
price that he had paid, he and all the others, Julia Wainwright,
Freeland Moore, and the loss of respect and simple humanity.... So
this was why Charles had run away from the theatre. Certain things,
certain elements in human character were too holy to be set before the
crowd.

She remembered her early struggles when she first went into the
theatre. She had won through them and had thought herself victorious
only to find herself confronted once more with the hard actualities:
either to accept the intrusion of the personal element into what should
be impersonal service or to acknowledge defeat.... She could do
neither the one nor the other.

If only she could weep. The woman in her calculated. If only she
could weep! But where another woman would have wept she could not.
She could only turn to her will and draw further strength from that.
It was so maddening, so silly, that play acting should entail such a
price. It was making it all too serious. What after all was it? Just
the instinct of play organised, and what was play without a happy joy?
If only she would weep, the obstinate old man clinging to his success
would melt; he would be kind; he would forgo all this nonsense that had
been buzzing in his scatter brain.... What he could not stand was
sincerity and a will diverted to other purposes than his own.... It
made her tremble with rage to think that all his enthus