R.R. You mean she didn’t arrive? O.W. Her arrival was a departure: the stage was her terminus. Engines whistled; the uproar became frightful. She ran to Brighton without stopping; and, I believe, still dies there. L.H. Was she so bad, then, after all? O.W. She may have been almost a genius; who can tell? The fatal mistake was when Hermann Vezin began inventing her. What would happen to an actress, however great, who came upon the stage bejewelled with the names of Sarah, Rachel, Ristori, Siddons? Probability becomes violated; the sense of the theatre is destroyed. When that happens all is over. Hermann Vezin should have held his tongue till the gods themselves applauded. But he lacked faith. The worst thing you can do for a person of genius is to help him: that way lies destruction. I have had many devoted helpers—and you see the result. Only once did I help a man who was also a genius. I have never forgiven myself. R.R. Oscar, you are perfectly absurd! O.W. (_with a glance of genuine affection_). But I have forgiven _you_, Robbie. L.H. What happened? O.W. To the man I helped? He never told me; and I would not ask. When we met afterwards, he had so greatly changed that, though I recognized him, he failed to recognize me. He became a Roman Catholic, and died at the age of twenty-three, a great artist—with half the critics and all the moralists still hating him. A charming person! L.H. How often one hears that said, as though it were the final summing up of a man’s life and character—covering everything. O.W. But surely it is so. What is more fundamental, more inalienable from a man’s personality, than charm? He may lose his looks; he may lose his character; but in almost every case that I have known—in spite of adverse circumstances—the charm remains, like the gift of a fairy godmother: something which cannot be got rid of. A person who has charm has the secret of life; but does not know what the secret is—he himself being the secret. For in this wonderful turning world we can know other people by their differences—as I know all of you; but we can never know ourselves. Matthew Arnold, a fine but a very mistaken poet, was always trying to do the most impossible thing of all—to know himself. And that is why sometimes, in the middle of his most beautiful poems, he left off being the poet and became the school inspector. L.H. I thought you said that the artist must know himself in order to know others?