OW!" She had been thinking that to work harder was impossible.
What did he expect of her? Something she feared she could not realize.
But soon she understood--when he gave her songs, then began to teach
her a role, the part of Madame Butterfly herself. "I can help you only
a little there," he said. "You will have to go to my friend Ferreri
for roles. But we can make a beginning."

She had indeed won. She had passed from the stage where a career is
all drudgery--the stage through which only the strong can pass without
giving up and accepting failure or small success. She had passed to
the stage where there is added pleasure to the drudgery, for, the
drudgery never ceases. And what was the pleasure? Why, more
work--always work--bringing into use not merely the routine parts of
the mind, but also the imaginative and creative faculties. She had
learned her trade--not well enough, for no superior man or woman ever
feels that he or she knows the trade well enough--but well enough to
begin to use it.

Said Moldini: "When the great one, who has achieved and arrived, is
asked for advice by the sweet, enthusiastic young beginner, what is the
answer? Always the same: 'My dear child, don't! Go back home, and
marry and have babies.' You know why now?"

And Mildred, looking back over the dreary drudgery that had been, and
looking forward to the drudgery yet to come, dreary enough for all the
prospects of a few flowers and a little sun--Mildred said: "Indeed I
do, maestro."

"They think it means what you Americans call morals--as if that were
all of morality! But it doesn't mean morals; not at all. Sex and the
game of sex is all through life everywhere--in the home no less than in
the theater. In town and country, indoors and out, sunlight,
moonlight, and rain--always it goes on. And the temptations and the
struggles are no more and no less on the stage than off. No, there is
too much talk about 'morals.' The reason the great one says 'don't' is
the work." He shook his head sadly. "They do not realize, those eager
young beginners. They read the story-books and the lives of the great
successes and they hear the foolish chatter of common-place
people--those imbecile 'cultured' people who know nothing! And they
think a career is a triumphal march. What think you, Miss Gower--eh?"

"If I had known I'd not have had the courage, or the vanity, to begin,"
said she. "And if I could realize what's before me, I prob