g varnish, pumice stone, hard pencil, and etching knife had all
gone into the photographer's version of this clear-eyed, fresh-lipped
blooming creature gazing back at her so limpidly. But, then, who didn't
need a lot of retouching? Even the youngest of them.

All this. Yet she loved it. The very routine of it appealed to her
orderly nature: a routine that, were it widely known, would shatter all
those ideas about the large, loose life of the actress. Harrietta Fuller
liked to know that at such and such an hour she would be in her dressing
room; at such and such an hour on the stage; precisely at another hour
she would again be in her dressing room preparing to go home. Then the
stage would be darkened. They would be putting the scenery away. She
would be crossing the bare stage on her way home. Then she would be
home, undressing, getting ready for bed, reading. She liked a cup of
clear broth at night, or a drink of hot cocoa. It soothed and rested
her. Besides, one is hungry after two and a half hours of
high-tensioned, nerve-exhausting work. She was in bed usually by
twelve-thirty.

"But you can't fall asleep like a dewy babe in my kind of job," she used
to explain. "People wonder why actresses lie in bed until noon, or
nearly. They have to, to get as much sleep as a stenographer or a clerk
or a book-keeper. At midnight I'm all keyed up and over-stimulated, and
as wide awake as an all-night taxi driver. It takes two solid hours of
reading to send me bye-bye."

The world did not interest itself in that phase of Harrietta's life.
Neither did it find fascination in her domestic side. Harrietta did a
good deal of tidying and dusting and redding up in her own two-room
apartment, so high and bright and spotless. She liked to cook, too, and
was expert at it. Not for her those fake pictures of actresses and opera
stars in chiffon tea gowns and satin slippers and diamond chains cooking
"their favourite dish of spaghetti and creamed mushrooms," and staring
out at you bright-eyed and palpably unable to tell the difference
between salt and paprika. Harrietta liked the ticking of a clock in a
quiet room; oven smells; concocting new egg dishes; washing out lacy
things in warm soapsuds. A throw-back, probably, to her grandmother
Scoville.

The worst feature of a person like Harrietta is, as you already have
discovered with some impatience, that one goes on and on, talking about
her. And the listener at last breaks out with: "This