summer clouds; for what belonged to storm, what was wild and intense,
dangerous, sudden, and flaming, he had no sympathy, and held with it no
communion. When I took time and regained inclination to glance at him,
it amused and enlightened me to discover that he was watching that
sinister and sovereign Vashti, not with wonder, nor worship, nor yet
dismay, but simply with intense curiosity. Her agony did not pain him,
her wild moan--worse than a shriek--did not much move him; her fury
revolted him somewhat, but not to the point of horror. Cool young
Briton! The pale cliffs of his own England do not look down on the
tides of the Channel more calmly than he watched the Pythian
inspiration of that night.

Looking at his face, I longed to know his exact opinions, and at last I
put a question tending to elicit them. At the sound of my voice he
awoke as if out of a dream; for he had been thinking, and very intently
thinking, his own thoughts, after his own manner. "How did he like
Vashti?" I wished to know.

"Hm-m-m," was the first scarce articulate but expressive answer; and
then such a strange smile went wandering round his lips, a smile so
critical, so almost callous! I suppose that for natures of that order
his sympathies _were_ callous. In a few terse phrases he told me his
opinion of, and feeling towards, the actress: he judged her as a woman,
not an artist: it was a branding judgment.

That night was already marked in my book of life, not with white, but
with a deep-red cross. But I had not done with it yet; and other
memoranda were destined to be set down in characters of tint indelible.

Towards midnight, when the deepening tragedy blackened to the
death-scene, and all held their breath, and even Graham bit his
under-lip, and knit his brow, and sat still and struck--when the whole
theatre was hushed, when the vision of all eyes centred in one point,
when all ears listened towards one quarter--nothing being seen but the
white form sunk on a seat, quivering in conflict with her last, her
worst-hated, her visibly-conquering foe--nothing heard but her throes,
her gaspings, breathing yet of mutiny, panting still defiance; when, as
it seemed, an inordinate will, convulsing a perishing mortal frame,
bent it to battle with doom and death, fought every inch of ground,
sold every drop of blood, resisted to the latest the rape of every
faculty, _would_ see, _would_ hear, _would_ breathe, _would_ live, up
to, within, well-nig