“Thus conscience does make cowards of us all;
And thus the native hue of resolution,
Is sicklied o’er with the pale cast of thought
And enterprises of great pith and moment,
With this regard their currents turn awry,
And lose the name of action,”
he went on, gesticulating and changing his intonation from old memory. And he thought to himself that when he saw Ophelia he would go down on his knees in front of her and say the final words of his speech, and that the audience would weep and cry out with a sweet foolishness.
And there was Ophelia. He turned to the audience with a cautious warning “Soft you, now!” and then walking swiftly across the stage he knelt down and exclaimed:
“—Nymph, in thy orisons
Be all my sins remember’d,”
and then got up immediately, expecting a burst of applause.
But there was no applause. The public were puzzled, quite unmoved, and all their attention was turned on Ophelia.
For some seconds he could think of nothing; it was only when he heard at his side a gentle girl’s voice asking, “Prince, are you well?”—a voice which trembled with the tears of sorrow for a love destroyed—that, in a momentary flash, he understood all.
It was a moment of awful enlightenment. Kostromsky recognised it clearly and mercilessly—the indifference of the public; his own irrevocable past; the certainty of the near approach of the end to his noisy but short-lived fame.
Oh, with what hatred did he look upon this girl, so graceful, beautiful, innocent, and—tormenting thought—so full of talent. He would have liked to throw himself upon her, beat her, throw her on the ground and stamp with his feet upon that delicate face, with its large dark eyes looking up at him with love and pity. But he restrained himself, and answered in lowered tones:
“I humbly thank you; well, well, well.”