Then her patience, her determination to succeed, her passionate desire to understand the part, added to her keen appreciation of the beauty of the language, all appealed to the artist in him; while her attitude of reverent admiration toward himself touched even while it humiliated him, in that he knew he was not worthy of such reverence. Yet, in some strange way, he seemed to see in her the reincarnation of his own youthful sincerity, passionate ambition, and eager, loving labor, before the testing fires of life had found so much dross in him; and, with a great wave of tenderness swelling in his heart, he vowed she should not "lose the way," as he had done; that her dainty imaginings, her original ideas, should not be frightened back by sneer or sarcasm; and that her reverent love for the mighty playwright of the ages should not be ridiculed or "guyed" into a mere question of which of his plays had the most money in it. She had the fire, the magnetism, the imaginative power of the artistic temperament, and, in guarding her from the banalities and the cheap cynicisms that are so deadly in their effect upon the enthusiastic young beginner, he somehow felt as if he were making reparation for the wrong he had done that younger self, who had hoped for fame, but had been given notoriety instead. Nor was that the last excuse Thrall found for his willing work in training this young actress. The manager, the money-getter in him, was appealed to also. More and more plainly he saw in this young gentlewoman of the unusual beauty, whose very imperfections were just enough to humanize, to attract, the public--not to repel and chill as absolutely statuesque perfection has a way of doing, a "card" of great value. More and more surely he knew that there was "money in her," and he meant that every dollar she could be made to draw should roll safely into the box-office drawer. And so he told himself that in order to discount the dulled edge of a curiosity gratified she must be taught really to act--to act well. For that was what they would have to rely upon at the last--beauty and acting combined, when the drawing power of mere novelty was exhausted. Therefore, it was simply good, sound, business tactics to train and explain and repeat--repeat--repeat! and to be very stern sometimes, because a drooping figure and a white, tired face made him long so to gather the weary young body into his arms and whisper: "Rest! poor little queen to be! rest!" All these reasons for coaching Sybil himself, instead of engaging Mrs. Mordaunt to do it for him, he acknowledged, and if there was yet another one, he ignored its existence until that morning when the first performance was but one week off.