s far as he could make out, nobody thought
more meanly of her popularity than she did, and he has been talking a
great deal to her about her season.

'"I never saw a woman at a more critical or interesting point of
development," he exclaimed at last, striding up and down, and so absorbed
in the subject that I could have almost laughed at his eagerness.
"Something or other, luckily for her, set her on the right track three
months ago, and it is apparently a nature on which nothing is lost. One
can see it in the way in which she takes Venice: there isn't a scrap of
her--little as she knows about it--that isn't keen and interested and
wide-awake!"

'"Well, after all," I reminded him as he was settling down to his books,
"we know nothing about her as an actress."

'"We shall see," he said; "I will find out something about that too
before long."'

* * * * *

'_August_ 17-19.

'And so he has!

'Paul has been devoting himself more and more to the beauty, Mr. Wallace
and I looking on with considerable amusement and interest; and this
afternoon, finding it intolerable that Miss Bretherton has not even a
bowing acquaintance with any of his favourite plays, Augier, Dumas,
Victor Hugo, or anything else, he has been reading aloud to us in the
garden, running on from scene to scene and speech to speech, translating
as he went--she in rapt attention, and he gesticulating and spouting,
and, except for an occasional queer rendering that made us laugh, getting
on capitally with his English. She was enchanted; the novelty and the
excitement of it absorbed her; and every now and then she would stop Paul
with a little imperious wave of her hand, and repeat the substance of a
speech after him with an impetuous _elan_, an energy, a comprehension,
which drew little nods of satisfaction out of him, and sometimes produced
a strong and startling effect upon myself and Mr. Wallace. However, Mr.
Wallace might stare as he liked; the two people concerned were totally
unconscious of the rest of us, until at last, after the great death-scene
in the _Nuit Blanche_, Paul threw down the book almost with a sob, and
she, rising in a burst of feeling, held out her white arms towards an
imaginary lover, and with extraordinary skill and memory repeated the
substance of the heroine's last speeches:--

'"_Achille, beloved! my eyes are dim--the mists of death are gathering. O
Achille! the white cottage by the river--the ne