She
felt in every nerve the exquisite quality of that which lay between
them, and it thrilled her through all her own perception of what she
did, and all the applause at how she did it. It was as if he, the
priest, was borne out upon a deep, broad current that made toward solar
spaces, toward infinite bounds, and as if she, the actress, piloted
him....
The Sphinx on the curtain--it had gone down in the old crooked
lines--again looked above and beyond them all. I have sometimes fancied
a trace of malignancy about her steady eyeballs, but perhaps that is the
accident or the design of the scene-painter; it does not show in
photographs. The audience was dispersing a trifle sedately; the
performance had been, as Mrs. Barberry told Mr. Justice Horne,
interesting but depressing. "I hope," said Alicia to Stephen, fastening
the fluffy-white collar of the wrap he put round her, "that I needn't be
sorry I asked you to come. I don't quite know. But she did redeem it,
didn't she? That last scene, where she knows what they are doing to
Him----"
"Can you not be silent?" Arnold said, almost in a whisper; and her look
of astonishment showed her that there were tears in his eyes.
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