hardly achieve more than mediocrity.«
    Klesmer had delivered himself with emphatic rapidity, and now paused a
moment. Gwendolen was motionless, looking at her hands, which lay over each
other on her lap, till the deep-toned, long-drawn »But,« with which he resumed,
had a startling effect, and made her look at him again.
    »But - there are certainly other ideas, other dispositions with which a
young lady may take up an art that will bring her before the public. She may
rely on the unquestioned power of her beauty as a passport. She may desire to
exhibit herself to an admiration which dispenses with skill. This goes a certain
way on the stage: not in music: but on the stage, beauty is taken when there is
nothing more commanding to be had. Not without some drilling, however: as I have
said before, technicalities have in any case to be mastered. But these excepted,
we have here nothing to do with art. The woman who takes up this career is not
an artist: she is usually one who thinks of entering on a luxurious life by a
short and easy road - perhaps by marriage - that is her most brilliant chance,
and the rarest. Still, her career will not be luxurious to begin with: she can
hardly earn her own poor bread independently at once, and the indignities she
will be liable to are such as I will not speak of.«
    »I desire to be independent,« said Gwendolen, deeply stung and confusedly
apprehending some scorn for herself in Klesmer's words. »That was my reason for
asking whether I could not get an immediate engagement. Of course I cannot know
how things go on about theatres. But I thought that I could have made myself
independent. I have no money, and I will not accept help from any one.«
    Her wounded pride could not rest without making this disclaimer. It was
intolerable to her that Klesmer should imagine her to have expected other help
from him than advice.
    »That is a hard saying for your friends,« said Klesmer, recovering the
gentleness of tone with which he had begun the conversation. »I have given you
pain. That was inevitable. I was bound to put the truth, the unvarnished truth,
before you. I have not said - I will not say - you will do wrong to choose the
hard, climbing path of an endeavouring artist. You have to compare its
difficulties with those of any less hazardous - any more private course which
opens itself to you. If you take that more