to make confusion
worse confounded. And when one laments it people stare; they don't know
what one means."

"Do you mean the grand manner, certain pompous pronunciations, the style
of the Kembles?"

"I mean any style that _is_ a style, that's a system, a consistency, an
art, that contributes a positive beauty to utterance. When I pay ten
shillings to hear you speak I want you to know how, _que diable_! Say
that to people and they're mostly lost in stupor; only a few, the very
intelligent, exclaim: 'Then you want actors to be affected?'"

"And do you?" asked Miriam full of interest.

"My poor child, what else under the sun should they be? Isn't their
whole art the affectation _par excellence_? The public won't stand that
to-day, so one hears it said. If that be true it simply means that the
theatre, as I care for it, that is as a personal art, is at an end."

"Never, never, never!" the girl cried in a voice that made a dozen
people look round.

"I sometimes think it--that the personal art is at an end and that
henceforth we shall have only the arts, capable no doubt of immense
development in their way--indeed they've already reached it--of the
stage-carpenter and the costumer. In London the drama is already
smothered in scenery; the interpretation scrambles off as it can. To get
the old personal impression, which used to be everything, you must go to
the poor countries, and most of all to Italy."

"Oh I've had it; it's very personal!" said Miriam knowingly.

"You've seen the nudity of the stage, the poor, painted, tattered screen
behind, and before that void the histrionic figure, doing everything it
knows how, in complete possession. The personality isn't our English
personality and it may not always carry us with it; but the direction's
right, and it has the superiority that it's a human exhibition, not a
mechanical one."

"I can act just like an Italian," Miriam eagerly proclaimed.

"I'd rather you acted like an Englishwoman if an Englishwoman would only
act."

"Oh, I'll show you!"

"But you're not English," said Peter sociably, his arms on the table.

"I beg your pardon. You should hear mamma about our 'race.'"

"You're a Jewess--I'm sure of that," he went on.

She jumped at this, as he was destined to see later she would ever jump
at anything that might make her more interesting or striking; even at
things that grotesquely contradicted or excluded each other. "That's
always possible if one's cleve