It was at her first real contact with the outside world, at terrible, stinging, and bitter truths, which were told her by an ex-kitchenmaid whom she had employed in the past but never seen, which struck the keynote of the play.
It was a play of black and white, of yellow and violet—of incredible contrasts.
No such brutal and poignant thing had been seen upon the stage of a West End theatre before. In all its shifting scenes and changes there was a hideous alternation.
The perfection of cultured luxury, of environment and thought, was shown with the most lavish detail and fidelity. No scenes in the lives of wealthy and celebrated people had ever been presented with such entire disregard of cost before.
The pictures were perfect. They were recognized by every one there—they lived in just such a way themselves.
But the other scenes?—the hideously sombre pictures—these struck into the heart with chilling horror and dismay.
Every one knew in a vague sort of way that such things went on. They had always known it, but they had put the facts away from themselves and refused to recognize them.
They were trapped now.
They had to sit and watch a supremely skilful imitation of real life in the malign slums of London. They had to sit and listen to dialogue which burnt and blistered, which seared even the most callous heart, truths from the hell of London forced into their ears, phrases which lashed their soft complacency like burning whips.
The act-drop came down in absolute silence after the last scene of the first act, a scene in an East-End sweater's den, so cruel and relentless in its realism that dainty women held handkerchiefs of filmy lace to their nostrils as if the very foul odour and miasma of the place might reach them.