The part of the play which Grantley had ordered her to render was that in which the heroine pleaded with her angry lover for his forgiveness of some past act of hers, which she had bitterly repented.
She was reciting the powerful lines now. They had always held her great audiences breathless, but how different was this pitiable travesty!
It would have been hard enough at best for her to make them ring true when delivered before such unsympathetic listeners and in such an incongruous garb, but she was not at her best. On the contrary, her performance was infinitely worse than any one would have supposed possible.
She had unconsciously adopted every one of the hypnotist’s brutal suggestions.
There was not a vestige of her famous grace in any of her movements. The most ungainly slattern could not have been more awkward.
Her words were spoken parrotlike, as if learned by rote, without the slightest understanding of their meaning. For the most part, they succeeded one another without any attempt at emphasis, and when emphasis was used, it was invariably in the wrong place.
It was her voice itself, however, which gave Nick and Chick their greatest shock.
The Lund, as she was generally called in Europe, had always been celebrated for her remarkably musical voice; but this sorry-looking creature’s voice was alternately shrill and harsh. It pierced and rasped and set the teeth on edge, just as the sound of a file does.
Nothing could have given a more sickening sense of Grantley’s power over the actress than this astounding transformation, this slavish adherence to the conditions of abject failure which he had imposed upon her.
It seemed incredible, and yet, there it was, plainly revealed to sight and hearing alike.