Mark read his play.
As he read it, he realised how poor an instrument lay in his throat. He was hoarse from a neglected cold, and his voice, though flexible, betrayed the effort made to control it. But the stammer spared him. To Sybil Perowne, familiar with and therefore slightly contemptuous of the arts of the elocutionist, this rough, uneven inflection and articulation had something of the charm of a disused viol or harpsichord, whose frayed, worn strings still hold jangled echoes of cadences melodic and harmonious long ago. She had the perceptions of the artist, and that feeling for art which is partly a gift and partly the result of patient training. Her perceptions enabled her to see Mark Samphire as he was, the man who had fought against odds; her feeling for art approved his work as the epitome and expression of that fight dramatically set forth in admirable English. At the end of the second act the reader looked up for a word of approval: "Go on!" she said. The climax of the third act provoked an exclamation at Mark's physical distress. She brought him a glass of champagne and insisted upon his drinking it. But he saw that her eyes were shining. He plunged into the fourth act and stumbled through it: every word rasping his throat. When he had finished she jumped up as Greatorex had done.
"I am a woman of impulse," she cried. "I will produce your play."
Mark stared at her, not believing his ears.
"You will p-p-produce it?" he stammered.
"Yes," she answered. "I don't say there's money in it; I don't say it hasn't faults and crudities; but I do say it's a play—and it pleases, it touches, it thrills—me."
She held out her hand. Mark had an intuition that she wished him to kiss it. He raised it gratefully to his lips.
"And now," she said gaily, "luncheon! I am famished. There is no sauce like emotion. That is why Spanish people eat so much at funerals."
At luncheon she asked a score of questions about his work and life.
"Last night," she said, "I read The Songs of the Angels. You have heard these songs yourself, eh? But—do you hear them now?"