is rather more than you, with your short dramatic
experience, can compass quite successfully, why, what does it matter? I
may be quite wrong. Don't take any notice of my opinion: forget it, and
let me help you, if I can, by talking over the play.'

She shook her head with a bitter little smile. 'No, no; I shall never
forget it. Your attitude only brought home to me, almost more strongly
than I could bear, what I have suspected a long, long time--the
_contempt_ which people like you and Mr. Wallace feel for me!'

'Contempt!' cried Kendal, beside himself, and feeling as if all the
criticisms he had allowed himself to make of her were recoiling in one
avenging mass upon his head. 'I never felt anything but the warmest
admiration for your courage, your work, your womanly goodness and
sweetness.'

'Yes,' she said, rising and holding out her hand half-unconsciously for
her cloak, which she put round her as though the wood had suddenly grown
cold; 'admiration for me as a woman, contempt for me as an artist!
There's the whole bare truth. Does it hold my future in it, I wonder? Is
there nothing in me but this beauty that people talk of, and which I
sometimes _hate_?'

She swept her hair back from her forehead with a fierce dramatic gesture.
It was as though the self in her was rising up and asserting itself
against the judgment which had been passed upon it, as if some hidden
force hardly suspected even by herself were beating against its bars.
Kendal watched her in helpless silence. 'Tell me,' she said, fixing her
deep hazel eyes upon him, 'you owe it me--you have given me so much pain.
No, no; you did not mean it. But tell me, and tell me from the bottom of
your heart--that is, if you are interested enough in me--what is it I
want? What is it that seems to be threatening me with failure as an
artist? I work all day long, my work is never out of my head; it seems to
pursue me all night. But the more I struggle with it the less successful
I seem even to myself.'

Her look was haunting: there was despair and there was hope in it. It
implied that she had set him up in her impulsive way as a sort of oracle
who alone could help her out of her difficulty. In presence of that look
his own conventionality fell away from him, and he spoke the plain,
direct truth to her.

'What you want,' he said slowly, as if the words were forced from him,
'is _knowledge!_ London has taught you much, and that is why you are
dissatisfied with y