I think I was a bit huffed at the time and crowed when a lightly spoken word of praise came to me presently from a very authoritative quarter. For one day, as we sat resting from our labours in one of the window seats of the beautiful Adams room where Burne-Jones had once painted and that Whistler had not long left, a light rap fell on the door and a voice long loved by us all called out: “Anybody at home?” as the radiant face of Ellen Terry peeped merrily in upon us. There was little work done that day; but our stage manager, whose old friend she was, bade me speak one of my speeches, and she said: “A good carrying voice, and she finishes her words.” No merit to me, who had been bred in a land where folk open their throats and where I had heard cultivated English only; but I was naturally flattered and, when “the night” came and I was awkward and terrified and John Hare smiled pleasant nothings and my kindly, ambitious stage-manager’s ardour was damped, I might have been sore cast down but that a new excitement and glamour had flashed into my life. Joe Carr’s “way” was carving its straight course. Many a time I had been caught wandering aimlessly up Gower Street pretending a shopping excursion and swearing that I had not seen him on the opposite pavement, and many a half-hour had we both pretended to enjoy the Elgin Marbles in the British Museum, but in truth it was only three weeks after that theatrical performance when I put my key one day into the door of the Dispensary over which were those historic rooms and felt rather than saw a figure behind me, and knew that the great moment had come for me and that I was to be carried off my feet. As once before he said: “May I come in?” And I answered nothing and left the key in the door (of which I never heard the end), and he followed me up to the big studio where we were to spend the first year of our wedded life. I had come there that day for a singing lesson from Mr. Jameson and, when he returned presently, I am sure he guessed no more than we did that in four months he would be in America and would have rented his rooms to us for our first home. CHAPTER II THE HOME OF BOYHOOD So from that day there was no more dingy boarding-house for me: my betrothed took me to his parents’ house at Clapham, where I well remember the courtly words: “I hear I have to congratulate my son Joe” with which I was received by his father.