Regarding acting as an Art he had more admiration for the surviving members of the old school, who handed over their lines with an assumption of great importance, than he entertained for the scions of the new. “You, at least, do something,” he observed to one old fellow, in a drama company of which he had become a member. “You do something, and do it deliberately.” “That’s so, my boy—that’s so,” came the mightily satisfied endorsement. “These moderns do nothing but realize their own ineffability.” “It’s true—it’s too true!” “And of course the worst of it is what you do is utterly useless—utterly false—and utterly wrong—” “Eh?” A stick of grease-paint fell to the floor. “Whereas what they fail to do is, in the general sense, absolutely right.” Remarks of this kind do not make for popularity. This, however, did not concern Wynne in the least. He had acquired the habit of talking rather less than he was used to do. The thoughts and convictions which at one time had bubbled to the surface he now mentally noted and preserved. He felt, in the pride of his egoism, that it was not wise to give away his ideas in conversation to the more or less trivial people with whom he came into touch. It was otherwise when one of the more successful members of the company deigned to exchange a few remarks, for then he would bring all his mental batteries to work with a view to prove to them how vastly inferior they actually were. One or two engagements were lost through the exercise of this habit, and several straitened and penniless periods resulted. Twice in three years Wynne left the stage, but from circumstance or inclination gravitated back again. He was always able to earn two pounds to two pounds ten a week playing small character parts, and if his attitude had been a shade more congenial it is probable he would have done still better. As a character actor he was singularly faultless and singularly conscientious. He possessed a remarkable facility for submerging his own personality and throwing off tiny portraits of different types, which were recognizable to the minutest detail. In the performance of these he took special pride, but if the producer interfered or made any suggestions he was truculent to a degree, and fought for his rendering with tiresome constancy. “It isn’t as if your suggestion would be in the least improving, and—good God!—if I am not to be trusted alone with eight lines, why on earth engage me?” This remark was fired at a super-eminent producer before an entire West End company, and brought back from the black void of the auditorium: “Would you please draw a fortnight’s salary from the business manager, Mr. Rendall, and return your contract?” He left the theatre straight away, and did not attempt to draw the salary. In the sunshine outside he was overtaken with a masterful desire to cry: “They shan’t lead me—they shan’t! they shan’t!” It was the wail of a little boy rather than of a man who fain would be a king.