But presently Dominic Iglesias became aware that he was very, very tired. He sat down in the chair again.
"Lord have mercy. Christ have mercy," he murmured, crossing himself. "I think the day's work is over. I will sleep."
That night Poppy St. John played as she had never played before; and her audience, taking her astonishing manifestation of talent as a compliment to themselves, cried with her and laughed with her in most wholehearted fashion.
Antony Hammond, in the stage box on the right, turned to Adolphus Carr, his companion, saying:
"Did I really write such admirable drama as this? I have girded at that term, 'creating a part,' as an example of the colossal vanity of the actor, and his very inadequate reverence for his maker, the playwright. But, I give you my word, after to-night I hide my diminished head. The player and playing are greater than any fondest conception of mine, when I put those words on paper."
And Lionel Gordon, his habitual imperturbability altogether broken up by excitement, stamped up and down stammering:
"Ge-ge-hanna, gehanna, what possesses the woman? I'd tour creation with her. She must be made to sign a three years' contract. If she can act like this there's nothing less than a cool half-million sterling in her."
And Alaric Barking, lean and haggard, invalided home from South Africa, escaping for one evening from the ministrations of gentle Lady Constance Decies and his pretty fiancee, sat huddled together at the end of a row at the back of the pit, hoping, "The deuce! nobody would see him," with a choke in his throat. He would love, honour, and cherish his pretty, high-bred, innocent maiden; but Poppy's voice tore at his very vitals. And he asked himself how had he ever borne to give her up, forgetting, as is the habit of civilised man in such slightly humiliating circumstances, that it was Poppy herself, not he, who loved and rode away.
Twice the curtain was raised at the end of the performance, and the Lady of the Windswept Dust made her bow with the rest of the company.—Now she could depart; thank heaven! she could go back to the strangely still house in Holland Street and fulfil her promise to Dominic Iglesias to watch with him till dawn. All through the play, the passion and excitement and pathos and mirth of it, her anxiety had deepened, her yearning increased, so that the joy of her public triumph was barred and seared by intimate pain. Now she could go. Already the carpenters were beginning their nightly work of destruction, metamorphosing the so-lately brilliant stage into a vast unsightly cavern of gaunt timbers, creaking pulleys, noisy mechanical contrivances, gaudy painted surfaces of canvas and paper, piled-up properties, of uncertain lights and draughts many and chill. Careless of all save that determination of going, Poppy moved away. But still the unseen audience clamoured. A fury had taken it, a madness such as will sometimes attack even the soberest and most aristocratic crowd, excitement reacting upon itself and stimulating excitement, till the demand which had begun in kindly enthusiasm became oddly violent, even brutal, men and women standing up, applauding, drumming, shouting a single name.
"There, it's over, thank the powers! Now let me get out of all this infernal din," she said, putting her hands over her ears as she pushed into the wings.