most profoundly shocked him, so
different was it from the theatre in which he had been born and bred,
the rather fatuous, very sentimental theatre which was inhabited by
simple kind-hearted vagabonds, isolated from the world of morals and
religion, yet passionately proud of their calling, and setting it above
both morals and religion. But this theatre, magnificent in this new
magnificent London, was empty and still. So much of the theatre that
had been dear to him was gone, and he mourned for it, lamented, too,
over his own folly, for he was suddenly brought face to face with the
fact that the theatre he proposed so light-heartedly to overthrow, the
theatre of the actor, had disappeared. In attacking it he was beating
the air. He had to deal with a new enemy.

As he was emerging from St James's Park into Victoria Street a woman
accosted him. He looked at her, did not recognise her, and moved to
pass on, for he was fastidious and took no interest in chance women.
She was a little woman, very alert, and she was rather poorly dressed.
She was young, but already her lips had stiffened into the hardness of
baffled hope and passion and her eyes smouldered with that
extraordinary glow which rouses a pity as cold as ice.

'I saw you were back in the papers,' she said. 'It's a pity you can't
hide yourself.'

Charles stared at her, stared and stared, cast about for some excuse
for pretending not to know her but remained rooted.

'You're not so young as you were,' she went on. 'There's a lot of talk
about you in the papers, but I know you; it's all talk.'

'My good woman,' said he, 'is that all you have to say?'

'It'll keep,' said she, and she turned abruptly and left him, feeling
that all the strength had gone out of his legs, all the feeling from
his bowels, leaving only a nauseating pity which brought up memory upon
memory of horrible emotions, without any physical memory to fix them so
that he was at their mercy. At last physical memories began to emerge,
rather ridiculously, theatrical lodgings, provincial theatres, the
arcades at Birmingham. And a blue straw hat that he had bought for her
long ago; and at last her name. Kitty Messenger, and her mother, a
golden-haired actress with a tongue like a flail in one temper, like
the honey-seeking proboscis of a bee in another.

'I had forgotten,' said Charles to himself. 'I really had forgotten.
Well--money will settle it. I shall have to do _The Tempest_ for t