"I think none the less of you," she answered steadily after a long pause. "I suppose you are being more true to yourself in not divorcing your husband and marrying Lord Chalfont." "I don’t know. I’m not sure that I’ve done right. But the stage makes it so easy for you to do wrong, to choose the way your inclinations lead.... Chalfont has been the greater sufferer. He hates to think that our relationship, when discussed, is bracketed with the usual run of light and unholy compacts. I confess to being more thick-skinned. The stage blunts one’s finer feelings, I suppose. There’s something dreadfully insidious about it. Its lax atmosphere saps the sense of rectitude. You don’t know that your views are gradually altering until you suddenly discover that, like everybody else on it, you are about to make its customs fit your own circumstances. Nobody on the stage is free from that taint: chorus girls are not a bit more frail than highly-paid actresses. Chorus girls are more flagrant, that is all." Alexandra was looking very serious and dismayed. "It’s rather terrible," she said reflectively. "Maggy has often said much the same thing in a different way. Is _everything_ wrong?" "For a girl like you, yes. I don’t assert that everything and everybody on the stage is bad. There are exceptions, of course. Clouds have their silver lining. What I do maintain is that the stage is not and never can be a profession that a nice-minded girl can adopt and expect to remain untainted by." "I wonder"—Alexandra’s voice was almost fearful—"what my own ideas about it will be in a few years’ time." "In a few years’ time, my dear girl, with luck you will be married and have forgotten all its ugliness. You may perhaps still be sufficiently enamored of the theater to let your husband sometimes pay for two stalls; and sometimes when you pass a struggling actress in the street you will recognize her by her stamp and thank God that you’re out of it all. That’s the best that can happen to you." "But you? You wouldn’t like to be out of it—altogether?" Mrs. Lambert’s eyes seemed to hold some happy secret. "I look forward to the day when I shall be—resting," she made answer. "Have you ever tried to wind a ball of thread with the skein in your hand? It isn’t easy. My skein is tangled ... and I am tired." XXII They were at Eastbourne during the following week. One morning whilst in her bedroom putting on her hat in readiness for a walk Alexandra was startled by an impetuous knock at her door. Chalfont’s voice, calling her by name, took her hurriedly to it. "Please go to Ada at once," he said. "She’s ill. She can’t act to-night. I have to see her manager and telephone to London for her doctor. You’ll look after her while I’m gone, won’t you?" he added with deep solicitude as he hastened off.