After he had danced there, however, he was not nervous of criticising the Covent Garden audience. “They are not very demonstrative compared with the Parisians, but they are faithful, they seem to come again and again in great numbers. But they have a horrible habit--during the last piece on the programme there is always a constant stream of people going out. I think this is disgracefully ill-mannered, and I refuse now to dance in the last piece on the programme. I refuse to dance to an audience that is melting away--it is an insult to art. At Paris, all the times I have danced there, not a single person has stirred at a single performance until the curtain fell at the end. And here at London we end quite early--at eleven o’clock. That gives people plenty of time to get their suppers, doesn’t it? Fortunately the stage at Covent Garden is conveniently big. It has one disadvantage--it does not slope at all. It is quite flat, so that when I was dancing there at first I kept falling forwards.” Madame Karsavina, the _première danseuse_ of the Diaghilew company, is in every way a fit colleague for the incomparable Nijinsky. Although still quite young, she is fast making for herself a reputation that will probably be second to none in the Russian ballet. Last year the retirement of Mademoiselle Preobrajenskaya from regular work and the withdrawal of Madame Pavlova left her an arduous task to fulfil in St Petersburg. In order to fill the gaps that she alone was capable of filling, she was obliged to study new parts which the retired dancers had made peculiarly their own--an undertaking of considerable delicacy. But her genius enabled her to draw even from the most exacting critics that quiet smile of inward appreciation which she has acutely declared to be the highest tribute to the artist. She is hard-working, very ambitious, and takes her art very seriously in all its branches.