hen and there to educate
the girl, how angry it would have made her, how she would have
hated that well-meaning person for spoiling her illusion!

The spell of the stage seized her with Tempest's first line,
first elegant despairing gesture. It held her through Burlingham
and Anstruther's "sketch" of a matrimonial quarrel, through
Connemora and Eshwell's "delicious symphonic romanticism" of a
lovers' quarrel and making up, through Tempest's recitation of
"Lasca," dying to shield her cowboy lover from the hoofs of the
stampeded herd. How the tears did stream from Susan's eyes, as
Tempest wailed out those last lines:

But I wonder why I do not care for the things that are like the
things that were?

Can it be that half my heart lies buried there, in Texas down by
the Rio Grande?

She saw the little grave in the desert and the vast blue sky and
the buzzard sailing lazily to and fro, and it seemed to her that
Tempest himself had inspired such a love, had lost a sweetheart
in just that way. No wonder he looked gaunt and hollow-eyed and
sallow. The last part of the performance was Holy Land and comic
pictures thrown from the rear on a sheet substituted for the
drop. As Burlingham had to work the magic lantern from the
dressing-room (while Tempest, in a kind of monk's robe, used
his voice and elocutionary powers in describing the pictures,
now lugubriously and now in "lighter vein"), Susan was forced to
retreat to the forward deck and missed that part of the show.
But she watched Burlingham shifting the slides and altering the
forms of the lenses, and was in another way as much thrilled and
spellbound as by the acting.

Nor did the spell vanish when, with the audience gone, they all
sat down to a late supper, and made coarse jests and mocked at
their own doings and at the people who had applauded. Susan did
not hear. She felt proud that she was permitted in so
distinguished a company. Every disagreeable impression vanished.
How could she have thought these geniuses common and cheap! How
had she dared apply to them the standards of the people, the
dull, commonplace people, among whom she had been brought up! If
she could only qualify for membership in this galaxy! The
thought made her feel like a worm aspiring to be a star.
Tempest, whom she had liked least, now filled her with
admiration. She saw the tragedy of his life plain and sad upon
his features. She could not look at him without her heart's
co