talking the other day about your giving yourself up altogether to your
art--living the lives of other people for the time being, forgetting
yourself, sacrificing yourself, having no life of your own but that.
What must the end of it be?--that you play with emotions and beliefs
until you have no faith in any one--none left for yourself; it is only
the material of your art. Would you not rather like to live your own
life?"

He had spoken rather hesitatingly, and he was not at all sure that he
had quite conveyed to her his meaning, though he had thought over the
subject long enough and often enough to get his own impressions of it
clear.

If she had been ten years older, and an experienced coquette, she would
have said to herself, "_This man hates the stage because he is jealous
of its hold on my life_," and she would have rejoiced over the
inadvertent confession. But now these hesitating words of his seemed to
have awakened some quick responsive thrill in her nature, for she
suddenly said, with an earnestness that was not at all assumed:

"Sometimes I have thought of that--it is so strange to hear my own
doubts repeated. If I could choose my own life--yes, I would rather live
that out than merely imagining the experiences of others. But what is
one to do? You look around, and take the world as it is. Can anything be
more trivial and disappointing? When you are Juliet in the balcony, or
Rosalind in the forest, then you have some better feeling with you, if
it is only for an hour or so."

"Yes," said he; "and you go on indulging in those doses of fictitious
sentiment until--But I am afraid the night air is too cold for you.