“Souls sometimes sleep a long while,” he said softly.
For the first time he saw her flush. Then she sat erect suddenly.
“I won’t permit you to question my right to be called an actress! You remember the scene in Ghosts in which Mrs. Alving listens to Oswald’s terrible revelation?”
He nodded, holding his breath. She did not rise, nor repeat a word of the play, but he watched her skin turn grey, her muscles bag, the withering cracking soul stare through her eyes. Every part of her face expressed a separate horror, and he could have sworn that her hair turned white. He shivered as if he had fallen into the snow water beneath the tower, and stood up.
“It is too horrible! I am glad there is no such part in opera.”
She smiled triumphantly and Mrs. Alving vanished. But she turned pale again as he asked abruptly:
“Was it of Mrs. Alving you were thinking?”
“Yes and no. It was Mrs. Alving on a superstructure. For the moment I was that tormented mother, but were I merely a clever actress that had left a pleasant home for the stage, I might make myself feel—well—half, perhaps, of what I expressed for your benefit just now.”
He asked irresistibly, “Are you glad or sorry?”
“Glad.” And neither had the vaguest premonition of when and where she would answer that question at length.