The demand upon her increased steadily as the act went on, and as she
met it, there slipped into her acting some of her own potentialities of
motive and of passion. She offered to the shaping circumstance rich
material and abundant plasticity, and when the persecution of her
destiny required her to throw herself irretrievably away, she did it
with a splendid appreciation of large and definite movements that was
essentially of herself.
The moment of it had a bold gruesomeness that caught the breath--a
disinterment on the stage in search of letters that would prove the
charge against the second year of Mrs. Halliday's married life, her
letters buried with the poet. It was an advantage which only the husband
of Mrs. Halliday would have claimed to bring so helpless a respondent
before even the informal court at the graveyard; but it gave Hilda a
magnificent opportunity of wild, mad apostrophe to the skull, holding it
tenderly with both hands, while Lord Ingleton smiled appreciatively in
advance of the practical benevolence which was to sustain the lady
through the divorce court and in the final scene offer to her and to the
prejudices of the British public the respectability of his name.
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