her. This way!'

And Madame de Chateauvieux, brushing the tears from her eyes with one
hand, took Kendal's arm with the other, and hurried him along the narrow
passages leading to the door on to the stage, M. de Chateauvieux
following them, his keen French face glistening with a quiet but intense
satisfaction.

As for Kendal, every sense in him was covetously striving to hold and fix
the experiences of the last half-hour. The white muffled figure standing
in the turret door, the faint lamp light streaming on the bent head and
upraised arm--those tones of self-forgetful passion, drawn straight, as
it were, from the pure heart of love--the splendid energy of that last
defiance of fate and circumstance--the low vibrations of her dying
words--the power of the actress and the personality of the woman,--all
these different impressions were holding wild war within him as he
hastened on, with Marie clinging to his arm. And beyond the little
stage-door the air seemed to be even more heavily charged with
excitement than that of the theatre. For, as Kendal emerged with his
sister, his attention was perforce attracted by the little crowd of
persons already assembled round the figure of Isabel Bretherton, and, as
his eye travelled over them, he realised with a fresh start the full
compass of the change which had taken place. To all the more eminent
persons in that group Miss Bretherton had been six months before an
ignorant and provincial beauty, good enough to create a social craze, and
nothing more. Their presence round her at this moment, their homage, the
emotion visible everywhere, proved that all was different, that she had
passed the barrier which once existed between her and the world which
knows and thinks, and had been drawn within that circle of
individualities which, however undefined, is still the vital circle of
any time or society, for it is the circle which represents, more or less
brilliantly and efficiently, the intellectual life of a generation.

Only one thing was unchanged--the sweetness and spontaneity of that
rich womanly nature. She gave a little cry as she saw Madame de
Chateauvieux enter. She came running forward, and threw her arms round
the elder woman and kissed her; it was almost the greeting of a daughter
to a mother. And then, still holding Madame de Chateauvieux with one
hand, she held out the other to Paul, asking him how much fault he had to
find, and when she was to take her scolding; and every