unforgettably sweet modulations.
Beyond the footlights a handful of sophisticated and sceptical habitues
of the theatre forgot for the moment their ingrained incredulity and
thrilled in sympathy with the wonderful rapture of that voice of eternal
Youth. Whitaker himself for the time forgot that he was the husband of
this woman and her lover; she moved before his vision in the guise of
some divine creature, divinely unattainable, a dream woman divorced
utterly from any semblance of reality.

That opening scene was one perhaps unique in the history of the stage.
Composed by Max in some mad, poetical moment of inspired plagiarism, it
not only owned a poignant and enthralling beauty of imagery, but it
moved with an almost Grecian certitude, with a significance
extraordinarily direct and devoid of circumlocution, seeming to lay bare
the living tissue of immortal drama.

But with the appearance of other characters, there came a change: the
rare atmosphere of the opening began to dissipate perceptibly. The
action clouded and grew vague. The auditors began to feel the
flutterings of uncertainty in the air. Something was failing to cross
the footlights. The sweeping and assured gesture of the accomplished
playwright faltered: a clumsy bit of construction was damningly exposed;
faults of characterization multiplied depressingly. Sara Law herself
lost an indefinable proportion of her rare and provoking charm; the
strangeness of failing to hold her audience in an ineluctable grasp
seemed at once to nettle and distress her. Max himself seemed suddenly
to wake to the amazing fact that there was something enormously and
irremediably wrong; he began with exasperating frequency to halt the
action, to interrupt scenes with advice and demands for repetition. He
found it impossible to be still, to keep his seat or control his
rasping, irritable voice. Subordinate characters on the stage lost their
heads and either forgot to act or overacted. And then--intolerable
climax!--of a sudden somebody in the orchestra chairs laughed in
outright derision in the middle of a passage meant to be tenderly
emotional.

The voice of Sara Law broke and fell. She stood trembling and unstrung.
Max without a word turned on his heel and swung out of sight into the
wings. Four other actors on the stage, aside from Sara Law, hesitated
and drew together in doubt and bewilderment. And then abruptly, with no
warning whatever, the illusion of gloom in the auditori