"Can you dance? Can you fence? Can you run? Is your body as mobile and lithe as an animal's? Do you breathe properly? Can you sing? Is your voice a cultivated instrument with an octave and a half of tones, or have you five tones at your command? Do you know how to fill a theatre with a whisper? Can you carry your body with distinction? Can you sit and rise with grace? Is your speech perfect?" He hurled the questions at her. "No," she admitted. "Then you don't know the a-b-c's of this art. When you can say 'yes' to all these questions, then you are ready to begin, and not until then. Mind you--to _begin_!" "But everybody on the stage cannot say 'yes' to all those things." "No, worse luck! Because soft-hearted fools like me permit crude little girls like you to speak a line without any excuse for so doing. We'll have no great acting in America until we shut the door upon every boy and girl who thinks he can act, by the grace of God." With this finale, the great man walked away, leaving Isabelle feeling very young and very flat. But she rallied presently. Of course, he had exaggerated it. It might be that the majority of people had to go that long, hard road of preparation, but always there would be some who would leap to the top without the ladder. In her deepest, secret heart she knew herself to be of that few. She took up the subject again that very night, after dinner, with Miss Watts. "What do you think is the most necessary thing for success, Miss Watts?" "Work." "But in something like the stage, I mean." "It doesn't make any difference what it is, true success is the result of hard work and nothing else," that lady persisted, bromidically enough. "Don't you think it is ever an accident?" "If it is, it's the worst accident that can happen to you." "Why?" "Because then you have to live up to something you haven't earned. You don't know what to do, and in most cases you slump back into mediocrity." "But there must be some people who don't grind----" "Geniuses, maybe; but they usually do." "How do you suppose geniuses recognize themselves?" "They don't, in most cases." "But if you felt that you had a great gift, that you were going to do wonderful things, mightn't it be that you were a genius?" "I should say that it meant that you were merely young," smiled Miss Watts. Isabelle decided that doubtless all geniuses met with this lack of recognition in those about them. She pinned her faith to herself! In spite of Cartel and Miss Watts--who, after all, were _old_--she rather thought that on the opening night, when she spoke her lines, few as they were, the critics would say simply, in large-type headlines: "CARTEL HAS FOUND A GENIUS!" CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO October came, dragged by, with the opening night of the play coming nearer. Wally induced Max to come to town and open the house. It was a cold autumn and nearly all of their friends returned early, too.