All these things came back to him as he sat beside her in the theatre and watched her ingenuous absorption. It was on “the story” that her mind was fixed, and in life also, he suspected, it would always be “the story”, rather than its remoter imaginative issues, that would hold her. He did not believe there were ever any echoes in her soul...
There was no question, however, that what she felt was felt with intensity: to the actual, the immediate, she spread vibrating strings. When the play was over, and they came out once more into the sunlight, Darrow looked down at her with a smile.
“Well?” he asked.
She made no answer. Her dark gaze seemed to rest on him without seeing him. Her cheeks and lips were pale, and the loose hair under her hat-brim clung to her forehead in damp rings. She looked like a young priestess still dazed by the fumes of the cavern.
“You poor child—it’s been almost too much for you!”
She shook her head with a vague smile.
“Come,” he went on, putting his hand on her arm, “let’s jump into a taxi and get some air and sunshine. Look, there are hours of daylight left; and see what a night it’s going to be!”
He pointed over their heads, to where a white moon hung in the misty blue above the roofs of the rue de Rivoli.
She made no answer, and he signed to a motor-cab, calling out to the driver: “To the Bois!”
As the carriage turned toward the Tuileries she roused herself. “I must go first to the hotel. There may be a message—at any rate I must decide on something.”