She had decided in her dressing-room half-way through the performance that she could never go near the Imperium again. That was finished. She had done what she had set out to do in the first instance. In her subsequent greater purpose she had failed, and she knew now why she had failed, because she was a woman and in love, and being a woman, she must work through a man's imagination before she could become a person fit to dwell on the earth with her fellows.... Without a pang she surrendered her ambitions, bowed to the inevitable, and for the first time for many a long week slept the easy, sweet sleep of youth. Her meeting with Rodd in the supper-room had relieved her of all her crushing responsibilities. She passed them on to him and from her he had won the strength to carry all things.
She was punctual to the minute, but he was late.
'They're falling over themselves about you in the papers, young leddy,' said the bookseller.
'Are they?'
'Haven't you seen them?'
He had cut out all the notices, and to please him she made a pretence of reading them, but they gave her a kind of nausea. The critics wrote like lackeys fawning upon Sir Henry's success.... In Paris with her grandfather she had once seen the Mariage de Figaro acted. Sir Henry reminded her of the Duc d'Almaviva, and she thought wittily that the type had taken refuge in the theatre, there perhaps to die. Sir Henry surely was the last of this line. Not even with the support of the newspapers would the world, bamboozled and cheated as always, consent any longer to support them.
It was a good transition this from the Imperium to the book-shop. Books were on the whole dependable. If they deceived you it was your own fault. There was not with them the pressure of the crowd to aid deception.
This wholesome little man living among books, upon them, and for them, was exactly the right person for her to see first upon this day when she was to discard her mimic for her real triumph. This day was like a flower that had grown up out of all her days. In its honey was distilled all the love she had inspired in others, and all the love that others had inspired in her.
This was the real London, here in Charing Cross Road, shabby, careless, unambitious, unmethodical. It was here in the real London that she wished to begin her real life. From the time of her first meeting with him in the book-shop, her deepest imagination had never left Rodd, and she knew all that he had been through. She had most profoundly been aware of his struggle to break free from his captivity, exactly as she had slowly and obstinately found her own way out. All that had been had vanished. Only the good was left. Evil had been burned away and for her now there was no stain upon the earth, no mist to obscure the sun. Her soul was as clear as this September day, and she knew that Rodd was as clear.... Of all that she had left she did not even think, so worthless was it. A career, money, power, influence? With love, the smile of a happy child, a sunbeam dancing into a dark room, a bunch of hedge-row flowers are treasures of more worth than all these, joys that give moments of perfection wherein all is revealed and nothing remains hidden.
Was there ever a more perfect moment than when Clara and Rodd met in the bookshop, each for the other having renounced all that had seemed of worth. Death might have come at that moment and both would have been satisfied, for richer, deeper, and simpler music there could not be.... She was amazed at the new mastery in him. The pained sensitiveness that had cramped him was all gone. He came direct to her, took possession of her without waiting for an impulse from her will. They met now in complete freedom and were frankly lovers.