Clara was bristling with fury against Charles for being so childish, and against Griffenberg for taking advantage of him. She knew that Charles was in an ecstasy, and unable to cope with any practical point they chose to raise. It would have been fair for Griffenberg to take exception to his estimates, but not to the birds and fishes.... Her sense of justice was so outraged that to keep herself from intervening she slipped out of the room and gave vent to her fury in the darkness of the passage.
The worst happened. The scheme was forgotten; the birds and fishes were remembered.... Griffenberg asked rather insolently if Mr Mann proposed to publish the scheme as it stood, and Charles, who did not detect the insolence, said that he certainly intended to publish the scheme and had indeed already sent a copy to the Press Association.
'As your own or as the Committee's scheme?'
Mr Clott intervened,—
'I made it quite clear that the scheme was Mr Mann's own, and Mr Mann sent with it what I may say is a very beautiful description of his theatre as it will be in being.'
'Theatres in the air,' said some one, and all, just a little ashamed, though with a certain bravado of geniality to cover their shame, rose to go.
As they came out of the room Clara darted up the stairs and heard their remarks as they departed. 'Birds and fishes.' ... 'Extraordinary man.' ... 'Fairy tale.' ... 'Damned impudence.'
Charles, still unmindful of any change, moved among them thanking them warmly for their support and explaining that if he had been somewhat long in reading it was because he had wished to leave no room for misunderstanding.
No one stayed but an Irish poet, who had been delighted with the words, birds and fishes, emerging like a poem from the welter of so much detail, and Verschoyle, a little uneasy, but entranced by Charles's voice and what seemed to him his superb audacity. They three stood and talked themselves into oblivion of the world and its narrow ways, and Charles was soon riding the hobby-horse of his theory of Kingship and urging Verschoyle to interest the Court of St James's in Art.
Clara joined them, listened for a while, and later detached his lordship from the other two, who talked hard against each other, neither listening, both hammering home points. She took Verschoyle into a corner and said,—