d do had been brought to bear upon the
surroundings of the scene; the delicate tilework of the walls and floor,
the leather hangings, the tapestries, the carved wood and brass work of a
Spanish palace of the fifteenth century, had been copied with lavish
magnificence; and the crowded expectant house divided its attention and
applause during the first scene between the beauty and elaboration of its
setting and the play of the two tolerable actors who represented Elvira's
father and the rival of Macias, Fernan Perez.

Fernan Perez, having set the intrigue on foot which is to wreck the love
of Macias and Elvira, had just risen from his seat, when Wallace, who was
watching the stage in a torment of mingled satisfaction and despair,
touched Madame de Chateauvieux's arm.

'_Now_!' he said. 'That door to the left.'

Kendal, catching the signal, rose from his seat behind Madame de
Chateauvieux and bent forward. The great door at the end of the palace
had slowly opened, and gliding through it with drooping head and hands
clasped before her came Elvira, followed by her little maid Beatriz. The
storm which greeted her appearance was such as thrilled the pulses of the
oldest _habitue_ in the theatre. Tears came to Madame de Chateauvieux's
eyes, and she looked up at her brother.

'What a scene! It is overpowering--it is too much for her! I wish they
would let her go on!'

Kendal made no answer, his soul was in his eyes; he had no senses for any
but one person. _She_ was there, within a few yards of him, in all the
sovereignty of her beauty and her fame, invested with the utmost romance
that circumstances could bestow, and about, if half he heard were true,
to reap a great artistic, no less than a great personal triumph. Had he
felt towards her only as the public felt it would have been an experience
beyond the common run, and as it was--oh, this aching, intolerable sense
of desire, of separation, of irremediable need! Was that her voice? He
had heard that tone of despair in it before--under over-arching woods,
when the June warmth was in the air! That white outstretched hand had
once lain close clasped in his own; those eyes had once looked with a
passionate trouble into his. Ah, it was gone for ever, nothing would ever
recall it--that one quick moment of living contact! In a deeper sense
than met the ear, she was on the stage and he among the audience. To the
end his gray life would play the part of spectator to hers, or else s