w.

Dolly whispered to me once, to know who the boy was.

"That is her boy," I said.

Dolly said nothing; but I understood the kind of terror that she had to
see them both there, so outrageous and bold; but she presently turned
back again to the stage to observe the play.

* * * * *

I said just now that the play which we saw has very dreadful memories
for me; but I do not know that more than once or twice at the time I had
any such feeling. There were some pretty passages in the play that
distracted me altogether, and a song or two, of which I remember very
well one sung by a _Nymph_, and answered by her swain with his
shepherds, of which the refrain was:

_The Sun is up and will not stay;_
_And oh! how very short's a lover's day!_

For the rest there was a quantity of bloodshed and intrigue and false
accusation, but I was surprised, considering the subject, how little was
against Popery; but Mrs. Behn was content at the end of it to make the
_Cardinal_ beg pardon of _King Philip_.

For the most part then I attended to the action--(and to Dolly, of
course, all the while). Yet certainly there were other moments for me,
when the shadow came down again, and I saw the actors and the whole
house as if in a kind of bloody mist, though I had at that time no
reason for it at all, and do not think that I shewed any sign of it. Two
or three times before, as I have related, there came on me a strange
mood--once when I came up from Wapping, and once as I put out from Dover
in the packet. But it was not that kind of mood this time. Then it was
as if all the world of sense were but a very thin veil, and all that was
happening a kind of dream, or play. Now it was as if the play had a
shocking kind of reality, as if the audience and the actors were
monstrous devils in hell; and the paint on Mrs. Lee's cheeks her true
colour, and her gestures great symbols, and the noise of the people the
roar of hell. This came and went once or twice; and at the time I
thought it to be my own humour only; but now I know that it was
something other than this. When I looked at Dolly it went again in an
instant, and she and I seemed to me the heart of everything, and all
else but our circumstances and for our pleasure.

Well; it ended at last, and there was a great deal of applauding, and
Mrs. Lee came on to the stage again to bow and smile. It was then, for
the third time, I think, that my horror fell on me.