thing in my career.'

'But I don't want help....'

'Ah! You think so now. But wait three years.... You think an actor
can know nothing of life, but who knows more? Has he not in himself to
reproduce every fine shade of emotion, the effect of every variety of
experience.... The people who know nothing of life are your cloistered
artists like Mann, or your Verschoyle drowned in money.... You have
not known me yet.'

Really he was getting rather ridiculous with his boyish romanticism.
He had been married twice and his two families numbered seven. But
Clara, too, was under the spell of the moon, and his gauche response to
her mood had touched her.

'Life is a miserable business for a woman,' said Sir Henry. 'I live in
dread lest you should be dragged down into the common experience.'

(Did he or did he not know about Charles?)

Clara laughed. This was taking her too seriously.

'Ah, you can laugh now while you are young, but youth attracts, it is
drawn into the whirlpool and is lost.... Is there more in you than
youth?'

'Much, much more,' said Clara exultantly. 'There has never been
anybody like me before.'

'By Heaven!' swore Sir Henry. 'That is true.... You have bewitched
me--and we had better be going back to the house.... Will you let me
carry you down?'

Without waiting for her permission, he lifted her, and she suffered him
to carry her down the last stony path, because her flimsy shoes were
already wet through. He did not guess that she had good reason, and
his heart thumped in his large bosom.

It had been a night of nights for him. Years of uneasy distraction had
melted away. Not even at the height of his success had he felt so
confident, so entirely superior to the rest of mankind as both to
command and to deserve their homage. In no play had he ever devised a
more romantic finale than this in which he carried his conquered
sprite--for so he thought her--back to earth. As he put her down, he
threw out his chest and turned to the stars as it was his habit to turn
to his audiences, and bowed thrice, to the right, to the left, to the
centre, with his hand upon his heart.

Verschoyle was very angry with her when she returned.

'You know how these people think of such things,' he said.

'What they think and what I do are very different,' retorted Clara, her
eyes shining, her cheeks glowing from the night air. 'It makes him
happy, and, if you are happy with me, he doesn't see why h