'Then you'll come back and stop this nonsense about living alone?'
'When The Tempest is done we'll see about it. I don't want to risk that. The Tempest is what matters now.'
'Are you going to play in it?'
'I don't know yet.... Will you go out into the auditorium and tell me what you think of my voice?'
Charles went up into the dress circle, and Clara, practising her newly-acquired art, turned to an imaginary Ferdinand—more vivid and actual to her now—and declaimed,—
'I do not know
One of my sex! no woman's face remember,
Save, from my glass, mine own; nor have I seen
More that I may call men, than you, good friend,
And my dear father: how features are abroad,
I am skilless of; but, by my modesty,—
The jewel in my dower,—I would not wish
Any companion in the world but you.'
She stopped. The vivid, actual Ferdinand of her imagination changed into the form of the lean, hungry-looking man of the book-shop. He turned towards her, and his face was noble in its suffering, powerful and strong to bear the burden upon the mind behind it. Very sweet and gentle was the expression in his eyes, in most pathetic contrast to the rugged hardness which a passionate self-control had shaped upon his features.... Her heart ached under this astonishment that in this phantom she could see and know and love his face upon which in life her eyes had never fallen.
'Go on,' called Charles, from the dress circle.... 'Admirable.... I never thought you could do it.'
'That's enough,' she replied, with a violent effort to shake free of her bewilderment and sweet anguish.
'If I meet him,' she said in her heart, 'I shall love him and there will be nothing else.'