ned.
"I cannot tell you now what I feel; perhaps I shall never find words to
express what I feel about your Elizabeth. I shall be writing about it
next week, and shall have to try."
"Do tell me now. You liked it better than my Margaret?"
Ulick shrugged his shoulders contemptuously, and they looked in each
other's eyes, and could hardly speak, so extraordinary was their
recognition of each other; it was so intense that they could hardly help
laughing, so strange it seemed that they should never have met before,
or should have been separated for such a long time. It really seemed to
them as if they had known each other from all eternity.
"How can you act Elizabeth, she is so different from what you are?"
"Is she?"
Her pale blue eyes seemed to open a little wider, and she looked at him
searchingly. He could not keep back the words that rose to his tongue.
"You mean that your dead life now lives in Elizabeth."
"Yes, I suppose that that is it."
They asked each other whether any part of one's nature is ever really
dead.
A few moments after the pilgrims were heard singing, and Evelyn would
have to go on the stage. She pressed her hands against her forehead,
ridding herself by an effort of will of her present individuality. The
strenuous chant of the pilgrims grew louder, the procession approached,
and as it passed across the stage Elizabeth sought for Tannhaeuser, but
he was not among them. So her last earthly hope has perished, and she
throws herself on her knees at the foot of the wayside cross. And it was
the anguish of her soul that called forth that high note, a G repeated
three times; and it seemed to Ulick that she seemed to throw herself
upon that note, that reiterated note, as if she would reach God's ears
with it and force him to listen to her. In the religious, almost
Gregorian, strain her voice was pure as a little child, but when she
spoke of her renunciation and the music grew more chromatic, her voice
filled with colour--her sex appeared in it; and when the music returned
to the peace of the religious strain, her voice grew blanched and faded
like a nun's voice. Henceforth her life will be lived beyond this world,
and as she walked up the stage, the flutes and clarionets seemed to lead
her straight to God; they seemed to depict a narrow, shining path,
shining and ascending till it disappeared amid the light of the stars.
"Well," she said, "did I sing it to your satisfaction?"
"You're an
|