She became so interested that at times she left her food untasted.  “How can you know all this?” she exclaimed.

“It is my business to know a great deal,” he replied.  “Then natural curiosity leads me to learn more.  The people of whom I have spoken are the animated pieces on the chess-board.  In the tremendous game that we are playing, success depends largely on their strength, weakness, various traits,—­in brief, their character.  The stake that I have in the game leads me to know and watch those who are exerting a positive influence.  It is interesting to study the men and women who, in any period, made and shaped history, and to learn the secrets of their success and failure.  Is it not natural that men and women who are making history to-day—­who in fact are shaping one’s own history—­should be objects of stronger attention?  Now, as in the past, women exert a far greater influence on current events than you would imagine.  There are but few thrones of power behind which you will not find a woman.  What I shall do or be during the coming weeks and months depends upon some of the people I have sketched, free-handed, for you alone.  You see the sphinx—­for as such I am regarded by many—­opens his mouth freely to you.  Can you guess some of my motives for this kind of talk?”

“You have wanted to entertain me, papa, and you have succeeded.  You should write romances, for you but touch the names one sees in the papers and they become dramatic actors.”

“I did want to entertain you and make a fair return for your society; I wish to prove that I can be your companion as truly as you can become mine; but I have aimed to do more.  I wish you to realize how interesting the larger and higher world of activity is.  Do not imagine that in becoming a woman, earnest and thoughtful, you are entering on an era of solemn platitudes.  You are rather passing from a theatre of light comedy to a stage from which Shakespeare borrowed the whole gamut of human feeling, passion, and experience.  I also wished to satisfy you that you have mind enough to become absorbed as soon as you begin to understand the significance of the play.  After you have once become an intelligent spectator of real life you can no more go back to drawing-room chit-chat, gossip, and flirtation than you can lay down Shakespeare’s ‘Tempest’ for a weak little parlor comedy.  I am too shrewd a man, Marian, to try to disengage you from the past by exhortations and homilies; and now that you have become my friend, I shall be too sincere with you to disguise my purposes or methods.  I propose to co-operate frankly with you in your effort, for in this way I prove my faith in you and my respect for you.  Soon you will find yourself an actor in real life, as well as a spectator.”