from the stage-manager, from the very
dressing-room staff of the theatre, who could make their lives
uncomfortable. She understood then what it was that had driven Charles
out, and made him so reluctant to return, and why his immense talent,
which should have been expressed in terms of the theatre, was reduced
to making what, after all, were only notes on paper. Convinced that
she could help to bring him back from exile, she struggled on, though
the strain increased as more and more fiercely she had to pit her will
against the powerful machinery of the theatre.

Everybody was kind to her, though many were alarmed by the intent force
with which she set about her work. Very often she had no energy left
for conversation, and would then take refuge in a book, a volume of
Meredith, or Bernard Shaw, Schopenhauer or Browning, who had been the
poet of her first discovery of the world of books. That frightened off
the young men, who were at first greatly taken with her charm. They
were subdued themselves as everybody was, from the business manager
down, but her silence chilled and alarmed them.... Except those she
bought herself, she never saw a book in the theatre.

At first, full of Charles's fierce denunciation of Sir Henry Butcher,
she detested the man, who seemed to her like some monster who absorbed
all the vitality of the rest and used it to inflate his egoism. He
never spoke to her for some weeks, and she avoided meeting him, did not
wish to speak to him, felt, indeed, that she was perhaps using him a
little unfairly in turning his theatre to her own ends, forcing herself
to accept it in order to make things easier for Charles, to whom she
used to go with a most vivid caricature of Sir Henry at rehearsals.

Until he appeared there was a complete languor upon the stage. The
actors and actresses still had upon them the mood of breakfast-in-bed;
some looked as though they were living in the day before yesterday and
had given up all hope of catching up with the rest of the world; some
of the men talked sport; all the women chattered scandal; some read
their letters, others the telegrams by which their correspondence was
conducted. In none was the slightest indication of preparedness for
work, for the thoughts of all were obviously miles away from the
theatre.... Stagehands moved noisily about. They, at least, were
conscious of earning their living. Messages were brought in from the
stage-door. Back cloths wer