is a very great genius, and
it is your duty to let the public see his work. It is shameful that
all his life people have talked about him, and have never helped him to
reach his natural position. He has been an exile and but for me would
still be so.'

'But for you,' repeated Sir Henry.... 'Would you like to play Miranda?
A perfect Miranda, but where is Ferdinand?'

Clara was alarmed at this prospect. She had read _The Tempest_ with
her grandfather, and knew long passages by heart. Its beauty was in
her blood, and she could not reconcile it with this theatre of Sir
Henry Butcher's. Sitting with him in the heart of it, she felt trapped
and as though all her dreams and purposes had been sponged out. Never
before had she even suspected that her freedom could be extinguished;
never before had she even been anywhere near feeling that her will
might break and leave her at the mercy of circumstances. She clutched
desperately at her loyalty to Charles, and she summoned up all her will
only to find that it forced her to regard him, to weigh and measure him
as a man.... He and she were no longer exiles, wandering untrammelled
in strange lands, but here in London among their own people, confronted
with their responsibility to the world outside themselves and to each
other. She was prepared to accept it, but was he?

V

THE OTHER WOMAN

Clara could hardly remember ever having been unhappy before. All her
life she had done exactly as she wished to do. Her grandfather had
never gainsaid her: had always indulged her every caprice, and had
supported her even when she had been to all outward seeming in the
wrong. He used to say in his whimsical manner that explosions never
did any one any harm.... 'It is all wrong,' thought she, as she left
the sanctum, and she was alarmed for Charles as she was still vibrant
from the hostility in the actor-manager. What was the occasion of it?
She could not guess. It was incredible to her that any one could
object to Charles, so kindly, so industrious, so simple in his work and
his belief in himself. People laughed at him sometimes indulgently,
but that was a very different thing to this hostility, this cold,
implacable condemnation. That was beyond her, for she had been brought
up in a school of absolute tolerance except of the vulgar and
ill-mannered.

Her quick wits worked on this new situation. She divined that Sir
Henry resented the intrusion of a personality as p