"This is what I have always longed for--a little home all my own," Leila had remarked, smiling wistfully.... It was after dinner and we had settled ourselves for a chat. "Then, in the name of common sense, dear girl, why did you go on the stage? Home life and a stage career are as antipodal as the poles." "And yet you manage to blend the two rather charmingly," she retorted. "Absurd! I'm not trying for a career, and as for home life ... my dear child, it's the merest pretense. Half the time we are not at home and the flat has either to be let or remain closed. One never knows from day to day when the furniture will be packed off to storage." "Yes ... I presume you are right.... How did I come to go on the stage?... Well, I suppose it was because I wanted a career of some kind.... I wanted to _do something_; you know how empty and shallow the average girl's life is, with the endless round of parties, visits, fancy work and that sort of thing. I was an only daughter, too. Father was well-to-do and wrapped up in the affairs of the small city in which we lived. After he died, mother thought she would like to travel. We went abroad. It was over there that the idea of a career took a stronger hold on me. About the only talent I could lay any claim to was music. I had always played and sung at our home concerts and church sociables.... But mother didn't encourage me in my ambitions. She argued that, since father had left us comfortably fixed, why should I want to worry my head about work? Besides, she said my first duty was to her as long as she lived. So there it rested.... We just drifted from place to place ... vegetating...." "Some parents are like that," I commented.