sits in her room, and after she is dressed, usually reads. When she is waiting for her cue, her maid stands beside her, and she speaks to her in French. Not one of her fellow-actors ever comes near her. She bows when she meets them, and does her own work regularly and religiously. She never says one word against the people; she simply never discusses them; and the consequence is, she is one of the most thoroughly disliked women in the profession by the profession. They do not forgive her her success, and they are ready, only too ready, to find fault with her. She has told me that she knows she is credited with being disagreeable and haughty, and she adds: "I prefer they should think that, to being very popular and being forced to be one of them." Her safeguard consists in being disliked. Do you think that is pleasant? Do you think that any woman with a heart likes to know that the men and women around her do not forgive her her successes, that they begrudge her her happinesses and are glad if she has sorrows? I cannot explain this to you. I can only say that I know it to be true, and that this dislike sometimes takes the form of acts as well as of words.
You give a shrug of your pretty shoulders, and doubt this. But you have not as yet lived on the other side of the foot-lights, and so I will tell you what I saw myself. I went one afternoon to visit a young girl in her dressing-room; there was great
