“I asked Mr. Donnell. He said it meant, ‘My mind is among the sauce-pans.’ In other words, you mean that your mind sometimes harbours material thoughts, while mine is the stupid, empty mind of a horrid, unhuman, intellectual sponge! “That is very impudent of you. Good heavens, if I _am_ like that, it will ruin me for my profession! “Experience is what I lack. I sit and actually beat my head with both hands when, at moments, I catch a glimmer of all that I ought to be and ought to have experienced, and ought to know. “Education is everything! One’s career depends on it. Yet, _is_ experience necessary to education? It can not always be. The prospect would seem terrifying. And of course any such theory becomes ridiculous in the last analysis. “We were discussing that question the other evening--Mr. Donnell, Betsy, Mr. Smull--he arrived unexpectedly last Monday--and I was listening, not taking part in the discussion--when Mr. Smull said that nobody was fit to play a person in love unless he or she had actually been in love. “You know that startled me. After a while it scared me, too. “I asked Mr. Donnell, privately, if that were true, and he laughed and said that several perfectly respectable women, guiltless of murder, had successfully played Lady Macbeth. “But I’m still wondering. Of course it isn’t necessary to murder somebody in order to play the part of an assassin. “But murder is an overt act. A murderous state of mind need not have any concrete consequence. “Love, also, must be a state of mind. “So do you think that one must have been actually in love to interpret convincingly in a play whatever results of love are to be presented? “I asked Betsy. She said yes. So I suppose she has been in love, because she does her part convincingly. “But what about me if ever I am cast for such a part? Yet, it seems to me that I ought to have enough instinct and intelligence to know how to be convincing. “You see Mr. Smull wants me to play second to Betsy in the next production; and the part is a girl in love who has a most unhappy time until the very end of the play. “One can study, read up, and prepare; but one can not enter into _that_ state of mind at will. “So, if they give me the part I have concluded to approximate by thinking of my friendship for you, which is the most important event in my life. “It ought to represent the state of mind in question. It’s got to. Do you think I could play that part convincingly? Why not? Because my idea of a person in love is that there is only one object of supreme affection. And I don’t care for anybody as much as I do for you. Why can’t I build on that?----” Charmed, humiliated, thrilled by her candour, the humour of her appeal went straight home to Annan.