Those amazingly blue eyes, widely-spaced; that arched nose, a pulse beating in the sensitive nostril as she talked; that glorious mouth, full and red, the upper lip slightly projecting over the under one; that firm chin, with the dimple that Edmond Rostand afterwards raved about; those high cheek-bones, the line of them extending to where the hair covered the ears; above all, that extraordinary mass of unruly golden-red hair, tossed about in riotous confusion and every direction.
Many another face I might see and forget, this one, never!
When Sarah stood up to say good-bye, I saw that she was taller than my mother, and unbelievably slender.
As we went downstairs, I was in such an ecstatic state of bliss that I had not the slightest fear of the gnomes lurking in the shadows of the nether regions as we passed them again on our way out, nor do I remember my mother talking to me.
My heart was dedicated to a goddess. Sarah Bernhardt, from that day onwards, was my idol.
CHAPTER II
What is the truth about Sarah Bernhardt’s birth? Have I the right to tell it, even though I know the facts? Have I the right to divulge this secret of all secrets, for nearly four-score years locked in the breast of the greatest woman of five epochs? Who am I that I should venture into the cupboards of the dead Great for the purpose of rattling the skeletons I am certain to find there—yes, in the cupboards of all the dead great ones who later surrounded this celebrated woman, and not alone Bernhardt?
I have faced this problem squarely, fought it out with myself through long, sleepless nights, when publishers were bedevilling me for the truth, the whole truth and—scarcely anything but the truth. It is a problem that will raise a sharp conflict in the feelings of all my readers. It is a problem for Poe.
Have I the right—knowing what I do of the real circumstances surrounding not only the dead genius but her living relatives also—have I the right to tear the shroud from that dead face, and let the world gaze afresh on a long-familiar visage, only to find a new and wondrously changed entity beneath?