GEORGE MOORE
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books in a library for a letter that some woman had written to her lover or that her lover had written to some woman; and in the drawing-rooms in which I danced there used to come a great, heavy, unwieldy man, who spoke little and was considered to be very stupid, but before whom everybody gave way; even the dancers, as he passed down the room, drew into groups to whisper to each other that the man who had just gone by was Desclée's lover. . . .
Barker: Has the gentleman’s name come down to us?
Moore: It is well known in France, and if you like I can—
Barker: I would not put you to the trouble. It would interest me more to hear if the help you received from a piece of music was a literary invention, or if it really fell out that after having despaired of bringing Athene Seyler before us as she appeared in Congreve's play, you did really—
Moore: Yes, Barker, I did really hear the D-Major Sonata in Amold Bennett's drawing-room and was reminded by it of Athene Seyler in Love for Love. But you haven’t told me what you think of the interview I have just read to you.
Barker: I think that if Athene is lucky and gets great parts to play, and her name is carried down to posterity, your description will help posterity to realize her charm. I don’t know that we have got any adequate description of Rachel's acting, though pens have been busy with the three great actresses. Gautier was a past-master of descriptive writing, and the abundant Théo would have found no difficulty in telling the actress' dress from the neck to the hem.
Moore: The fame of the actress is transitory.
Barker: Not so transitory as the fame of the authors she represents; their works remain to decry them. The actress is more fortunate; she leaves only a name and a legend.
Moore: You are right, Barker. The mummer is more fortunate than the poet, musician, painter, or sculptor, and Athene is fortunate among her sisters, for I have always refrained from seeing her in those parts in which she earns her bread.
Barker: And you live in your memory of a unique performance, given, you tell me, by the Phoenix Society; but in what theatre?
Moore: In the Lyric, Hammersmith.
Barker: Now I am beginning to understand why you doubted the wisdom of spending five hundred thousand pounds in building
