dy who
happened to be by, to ask if that was right, and when they stared at
him he would lose his temper and say,--

'Shakespeare! It's Shakespeare! Everybody knows their Shakespeare.'

Clara took the precaution of learning his part in his scenes with her
and was able to prompt him when he started fumbling or improvising. He
was taut with anxiety, and completely ignored everything not
immediately bearing on the production, as to which he was obviously not
easy in his mind. He talked to himself a good deal, and Clara heard
him more than once damning Charles under his breath. In spite of
herself she was a little hurt that he took no notice of her outside her
part in the play. His only concern with the world off the stage was
through Lady Bracebridge and Lady Butcher, who were vastly busy with
the dressing of the front of the house and began introducing their
distinguished aristocratic and political friends at rehearsals, where
they used to sit in the darkness of the auditorium and say,--

'Too sweet! Divine, divine!'

It was difficult to see what they could possibly make of the chaos on
the stage, with actors strolling to and fro mumbling their parts,
others going through their scenes, carpenters running hither and
thither, the lights going up and down and changing from blue to amber,
amber to blue, white, red.... Up to the very last Sir Henry made
changes, and the more excited he got the further he drifted away from
the play's dramatic context, and strove to break up the aesthetic
impression of the whole with innumerable tricks, silences, gestures,
exaggerated movements of the actors, touches of grotesque and
irrelevant humour, devices by which Prospero could be in the centre of
the stage, anything and everything to impose his own tradition and
personality on both Shakespeare and Charles.

Clara was thankful that Charles had quarrelled with him and was not
there to see. Sir Henry was like a man possessed. He worked in a
frenzy to retrieve the situation, and to recover the ground he had
lost; and he only seemed sure of himself in his scenes with Ariel, and
over them he went again and again, not for a moment sparing Clara or
thinking of the physical effort so much repetition entailed for her.

She did not object. It was a great relief to go to her rooms, worn
out, and to lie, unable to think, incapable of calculation, lost to
everything except her will to play Ariel with all the magic and
youthful vitalit