girl!

She would not have done it had she known that Rodd was in front. He
had decided to go at the last moment, to see her, as he thought for the
last time, before she was delivered up to the public.... He knew its
voracity. He knew the use to which the theatre was put, to keep the
public drugged, to keep it drowned beneath the leagues and leagues of
the stale waters of boredom. He knew perfectly well that nothing could
shift them out of it, that any awakening was too painful for them to
endure, and that there was no means of avoiding this constant sacrifice
of personality after personality, talent after talent, victim after
victim. He had hoped against hope that Clara, being what she was,
would save herself in time, but he had decided that he had no right to
interfere, or to offer his assistance. Against a machine like the
Imperium, what could youth do? He credited her with the boundless
confidence of youth, but he knew that she would be broken.

He had a seat at the back of the dress circle, and he suffered agonies.
Mann's scenery annoyed him. The fellow had dramatic imagination, but
what was the good of expressing it in paint and a structure of canvas
and wood without reference to the actors? For that was what Charles
did. He left nothing to the play. His scenery in its way was as
oppressive as the old realism; indeed it was the old realism standing
on its head.... It called attention to itself and away from the drama.

Rodd caught his breath when Clara first appeared. He thought for a
moment that she must succeed, and that the rest of the company, even
the scenery, must be caught up into the beauty she exhaled. But the
electricians were too much for her. They followed her with spot-limes
and gave her no play of light and shadow.... That, Rodd knew, was
Butcher, exploiting his new discovery, thrusting it down the public's
greedy maw. The ruthlessness of it! This exquisite creature of
innocence, this very Ariel, born at last in life to leap forth from the
imagination that had created her, this delicious spirit of freedom,
come to beckon the world on to an awakening from its sloth and shame!
To be used to feed the appetite for sensation and novelty!

Rodd saw how she suffered, saw how as the entertainment proceeded the
wings of her spirit shrivelled and left her with nothing but her talent
and her will. Nothing in all his life had hurt him more.... And he,
too, felt the deadly stillness of this