Irving listened, gravely weighing all I said; then he answered me genially: “That is all true; but in this case I have no doubt. I _know_ the play will do. To-night I think you have not been able to judge accurately. You are forming an opinion largely from the effect of the Brocken. As far as to-night goes you are quite right; but you have not seen my dress. I do not want to wear it till I get all the rest correct. Then you will see. I have studiously kept as yet all the colour scheme to that grey-green. When my dress of flaming scarlet appears amongst it—and remember that the colour will be intensified by that very light—it will bring the whole picture together in a way you cannot dream of. Indeed I can hardly realise it myself yet, though I know it will be right. You shall see too how Ellen Terry’s white dress, and even that red scar across her throat, will stand out in the midst of that turmoil of lightning!” He had seen in his own inner mind and with his vast effective imagination all these pictures and these happenings from the very first; all that had been already done was but leading up to the culmination. IV Let me say here that Irving loved sincerity, and most of all in those around him and those who had to aid him in his work—for no man can do all for himself. Alfred Gilbert the sculptor once said to me on seeing from behind the scenes how a great play was pulled through on a first night, when every soul in the place was alive with desire to aid and every nerve was instinct with thought: “I would give anything that the world holds to be served as Irving is!” He was quite right. There must be a master mind for great things; and the master of that mind must learn to trust others when the time of action comes. The time for doubting, for experimenting, for teaching and weighing and testing is in the antecedent time of preparation. But when _the_ hour strikes, every doubt is a fetter to one’s own work—a barrier between effort and success. In artistic work this is especially so. The artist temperament is sensitive—almost super-sensitive; and the requirements of its work necessitate that form of quietude which comes from self-oblivion. It is not possible to do any work based on individual qualities, when from extrinsic cause some unrequired phase of that individuality looms large in the foreground of thought.