Yet here she was, Thrall's ideal Beatrice, well-born, well-bred, beautiful, graceful, but possessed of a young devil of mockery that you saw dancing in her eyes and heard in her bubbling laughter. The stings of her wit seemed healed by the honey of her manner. Full of affectations, airs, and graces toward the courtiers, her "If I were a man!" speech was so full of tender love and sorrow for her injured cousin Hero that its final hot burst of rage and scorn left her with tears wet upon her cheeks. And consummate artist that he was, Thrall threw such sudden passionate intensity into Benedick's answer, "By this hand I love thee!" that it was no wonder the act brought the people upstanding; and one old playgoer remarked that "it was like watching an exhibition of skilful fencing, where flying sparks made you uncertain whether the bout was friendly or a duel to the death." Thrall had kept his promise; he had warned her away from so many pitfalls that some of the critics declared she had triumphed through what she had not done almost as much as through what she had. She had avoided the absolute shrewishness with which Beatrice is often invested; also the vindictive ferocity of the "If I were a man!" that catches the gallery, while it "makes the judicious grieve," and wonder, too, why Benedick should have been called upon for assistance by such a man-eating creature. Neither did she fire her best witticisms point-blank at the audience and pause--to make her "point." And better still, she avoided that strained, unnatural merriment that makes the public pity the evident fatigue of an otherwise satisfactory Beatrice. And this last bore strongest witness to the depth of study she had given to the play--yes, the play; for the actress who studies only her own lines gains but the narrowest and baldest view of the character. Sybil had studied the environment of the brilliant, high-born, wilful "she Mercutio," as Jim Roberts in an inspired moment of intoxication had termed Beatrice, in order to know in what manner she should address her impertinences to her uncle--whether with a spoiled-child daring, made pardonable by a respectful bearing; in open insolence, or in veiled dislike. So she studied Leonato carefully, and so she did all the characters she came in contact with, with the result that her manner varied according to her varying companions; and the tension of the bow was not strained to the breaking-point at any time.