His nobles shall rise up, his knights betray him
And he go forth, as I go forth, alone.
A shadow fell across her upon the grass; and preoccupied as she was she seemed to know even the shape of the shadow. Braintree reclothed and in his right mind (which some considered a very wrong mind) had joined her in the garden.
Before he could speak, she had said impulsively: “I’ve discovered something. It’s more natural to talk poetry than to talk prose. Just as there’s more spontaneity in singing than in stammering. Only, you see, most of us stammer.”
“Your librarian certainly didn’t stammer,” said Braintree. “You might almost say he sang. I’m a pretty prosaic person; but I feel somehow as if I’d been listening to good music. It all seems very mysterious. When a librarian can act a King like that, there seems to be only one possible inference; that he has only been acting a librarian. And excellent as he was as the King, I consider his creation of the part of an embarrassed bookworm in the library was an even more finished performance. Do theatrical stars often come and conceal themselves behind bookcases in this way?”
“You think he was always acting,” said Olive, “and I know he was never acting. That is the explanation.”
“I fancy you are right,” he answered. “But couldn’t you have sworn you were in the presence of a great actor?”
“No, no; that is just the point,” she cried sharply. “I could have sworn I was in the presence of a great man.”
After a pause she went on: “I don’t mean a great acting man like Garrick or Irving or somebody. I mean a great dead man–most awfully alive. I mean a medieval man: a man risen out of the grave.”
“I know what you mean,” assented the other, “and of course you are quite right. You mean that he couldn’t have taken any other part. Your friend Mr. Archer could have taken any other part; but he is only a good actor.”