dim. An hour earlier I had seen her in Oxford Street, Manchester,

seated in an open, horseless carriage, a dozen enthusiastic girls pulling at the shafts, a few ribald boys following and shouting small obscenities. I admired the perfect way she carried off the trying situation. She sat perfectly calmly, as though nothing in the least unusual were happening, as though, indeed, it were her daily custom, and the daily custom of all women, to be dragged through the public streets by a band of young ladies.

We sat under a lamp at a large table. The things we discussed are now of no consequence, for the need for their discussion no longer exists. I can only give my impression of her.

She struck me as being unutterably weary, weary bodily and perhaps mentally. Her personality suggested a body and a spirit being driven by an implacable will, a will that had no mercy for herself or for others, a will that no power could break. I could not help wondering, as I looked at her, whether she had not her moments of doubt, of self-distrust. She must have had, for all men and women have. But those moments would be few and short. Though she spoke to me very quietly, without a gesture, with one rather tightly clenched hand on the table, I felt the sheer _power_ of her, the power that a quenchless spirit always gives to its owner.

Fanatic? Well, yes, if to be indifferent to the opinion of other people and to be absolutely sure of yourself is to be fanatical. Certainly, she was strange and grim and relentless. And yet one could not doubt her tenderness, her deep sympathy, her devotion to humanity. Yes, a strange woman, but perhaps not so very strange. The qualities I saw in her are common qualities; the difference between her and others was simply that she possessed those qualities in an unusual degree.

* * * * *

Jacob Epstein, after flouting the artistic conventions for at least ten years, is being taken to the heart of the public. The impossible is happening, and it is happening because of the war. The war has forced reality upon us; it has made us love beauty rather than prettiness, truth rather than make-believe, the soul of things rather than their appearances.

Epstein, I think, could never be said to be in revolt against any of the artistic tendencies of the time. He simply did not follow those tendencies or permit them to influence him. But three or four years ago, when I first met him, he had the appearance, the manner, and even the thoughts of one who is in revolt.

I remember discussing with him some very curious and, indeed, rather alarming designs of his which were being exhibited at a little gallery whose name I have forgotten. The designs were openly and widely described as “indecent”; to me they were not indecent: they were merely meaningless. I could see no idea behind them.

“They are not designs,” said Epstein, a little petulantly, I thought.

“Then what _are_ they?” I asked. “What do _you_ call them?”

“I am not aware that I call them anything.”

“But what do they _mean_?”

He smiled curiously and (we were sitting in the Café Royal) lit a cigarette.

“Ah! That is for you to find out. Surely you don’t expect an artist to explain himself?”

Of course he was perfectly right, and I was more than foolish to ask him these questions. But I flogged at it.

“Now, your busts! Especially that wonderful head of Augustus John’s son!—beautiful, marvellous! But those extraordinary red drawings.”

“I cannot explain them,” said he, “but I would certainly like you to understand them, for it seems to me that you are not unintelligent.”

He gave me a quick, sly look, and we began to talk of John. I am afraid that Epstein must have qualified his opinion of my intelligence, for he asserted, in contradiction to what I was saying, that John was on the wrong tack, and we failed to come to any agreement about this most wonderful of living painters.

Like most artists, Epstein is pronouncedly inarticulate. He is, I suppose, as much a mystery to himself as he is to others. But his work is, of course, a hundred times more interesting than himself.

I used to see him often, but we rarely did more than acknowledge each other’s existence, and when I saw him the other week in khaki, sitting in the Café Royal, it was clear to me that, though he said he remembered me, he had only a vague recollection of my personality and had completely forgotten my name.

* * * * *

I have often thought it strange that while singers like Madame Patti and Madame Tetrazzini should conquer the world—and by the world I mean every section of the musical public, vulgar and fastidious alike—another and, to my mind, a very much finer artiste, Madame Ackté, should be regarded with delight only by those whose musical experience is wide and whose minds have been tutored by comprehensive study. Personality, after all, is almost everything in Art, and Madame Ackté has a personality that dwarfs into insignificance nearly all singers who are her equal in technical attainments and in musical subtlety.

Her great part is Salomé, in Richard Strauss’s opera of that name. With the wonderful intuition of a healthy, robust mind she has divined all the perverted wickedness of that most tortured woman. Her acting is among the finest things of our day.

No one could guess, in talking to this quiet, almost demure woman, that she has in her such fires of passion, such powers of portraying devastating wickedness. She has charm, graciousness, simplicity. Like Yvette Guilbert, she has worked hard almost every day of her life. Her talk is all of music and acting. She seems most unmodern. Her ingenuous love of praise is delightful, and if you notice the little subtleties in her singing and acting that most people do not notice, she is your friend for ever.