’She had conquered me altogether.  It was done so warmly—­with such a winning, spontaneous charm.  I cannot say what pleasure I got out of those primroses lying in her soft ungloved hand all the way home.  Henceforward, I feel she may make what judgments and draw what lines she pleases; she won’t change me, and I have some hopes of modifying her; but I am not very likely to feel annoyance towards her again.  She is like some frank, beautiful, high-spirited child playing a game she only half understands.  I wish she understood it better.  I should like to help her to understand it—­but I won’t quarrel with her, even in my thoughts, any more!

* * * * *

’On looking over this letter it seems to me that if you were not you, and I were not I, you might with some plausibility accuse me of being—­what?—­in love with Miss Bretherton?  But you know me too well.  You know I am one of the old-fashioned people who believe in community of interests—­in belonging to the same world.  When I come coolly to think about it, I can hardly imagine two worlds, whether outwardly or inwardly, more wide apart than mine and Miss Bretherton’s.’

CHAPTER V

During the three weeks which elapsed between the two expeditions of the ‘Sunday League,’ Kendal saw Miss Bretherton two or three times under varying circumstances.  One night he took it into his head to go to the pit of the Calliope, and came away more persuaded than before that as an actress there was small prospect for her.  Had she been an ordinary mortal, he thought the original stuff in her might have been disciplined into something really valuable by the common give and take, the normal rubs and difficulties of her profession.  But, as it was, she had been lifted at once by the force of one natural endowment into a position which, from the artistic point of view, seemed to him hopeless.  Her instantaneous success—­dependent as it was on considerations wholly outside those of dramatic art—­had denied her all the advantages which are to be won from struggle and from laborious and gradual conquest.  And more than this, it had deprived her of an ideal; it had tended to make her take her own performance as the measure of the good and possible.  For, naturally, it was too much to expect that she herself should analyse truly the sources and reasons of her popularity.  She must inevitably believe that some, at least, of it was due to her dramatic talent in itself.  ‘Perhaps some of it is,’ Kendal would answer himself.  ’It is very possible that I am not quite fair to her.  She has all the faults which repel me most.  I could get over anything but this impression of bare blank ignorance which she makes upon me.  And as things are at present, it is impossible that she should learn.  It might be interesting to have the teaching of her!  But it could only be done by some one with whom she came naturally into frequent contact.  Nobody could thrust himself in upon her.  And she seems to know very few people who could be of any use to her.’