hat speech; I can't do it!"

'"It wants more work," said Paul; "you'll get it. But the rest was
admirable. You must have worked very hard!"

'"So I have," she said, brightening at the warmth of his praise. "But
Diderot is wrong, wrong, wrong! When I could once reach the feeling of
the Tybalt speech, when I could once _hate_ him for killing Tybalt in the
same breath in which I _loved_ him for being Romeo, all was easy; gesture
and movement came to me; I learnt them, and the thing was done."

'The reference, of course, meant that Paul had been reading to her his
favourite _Paradoxe sur le Comedien_, and that she had been stimulated,
but not converted, by the famous contention that the actor should be the
mere "cold and tranquil spectator," the imitator of other men's feelings,
while possessing none of his own. He naturally would have argued, but I
would not have it, and made her rest. She was quite worn out with the
effort, and I do not like this excessive fatigue of hers. I often wonder
whether the life she is leading is not too exciting for her. This is
supposed to be her holiday, and she is really going through more
brain-waste than she has ever done in her life before! Paul is throwing
his whole energies into one thing only, the training of Miss Bretherton;
and he is a man of forty-eight, with an immense experience, and she a
girl of twenty-one, with everything to learn, and as easily excited as he
is capable of exciting her. I really must keep him in check.

'Mr. Wallace, when we had sent her home across the canal--their apartment
is on the other side, farther up towards the railway station--could not
say enough to me of his amazement at the change in her.

'"What have you done to her?" he asked. "I can hardly recognise the old
Miss Bretherton at all. Is it really not yet four months since your
brother and I went to see her in the _White Lady_? Why, you have
bewitched her!"

'"We have done something, I admit," I said; "but the power you see
developed in her now was roused in her when months ago she first came in
contact with the new world and the new ideal which you and Eustace
represented to her."

'There, my dear Eustace, have I given you your due? Oh, Miss Bretherton
says so many kind things about you! I'll take especial pains to tell you
some of them next time I write.'

* * * * *

WALLACE TO KENDAL.

'VENICE, _August_ 27.

'MY DEAR KENDAL--This has been a day of events