"Did you give my message?" asked Mrs. Kildair as he took his place.
"It was wiser not," he said. Then all at once, struck by the fatigue in her face, he asked anxiously: "Are you very tired?"
"Yes, very," she said.
In this box, too, nothing had been spoken of except the drama, which at that moment was centered about John G. Slade. As nothing could possibly be known, every one arrived with a fresh rumor, and the burden of all was the annihilation of the Westerner. The sudden darkness came to her as a relief. She relaxed wearily in her chair and forced her mind to forget itself in the sudden access of gaiety from the stage.
This second act was a veritable triumph for Emma Fornez. In the scene of Don Jose's return she acted with such fine and natural primitive passion that all the constricted little feminine natures in the audience were stirred by the pulsing exhibition of an emotion they had carefully choked or reduced to mathematics, and, really moved, trembling in their imprisoned bodies, they applauded for the first time. Then suddenly they ceased—a little ashamed.
In descending the stairway to go behind the stage, Beecher perceived Miss Charters in the distance of the shifting crowd. He stopped, by a movement he did not analyze, to speak to a purely chance acquaintance, hoping that she would perceive him. Then he continued to the dressing-room of the prima donna.
Emma Fornez was in a state of frenzied delight.
"I have them, Teddy—I have them! Is it not so?" she cried, clapping her hands together as a child. She flung her arms about him, embracing him. In fact, she embraced every one—even Victorine, her maid.
"The house is wild with enthusiasm," he said, laughing.
"Aha! I made them sit up, didn't I—your cold women! It's the second act, Teddy—the second—you get them there. Bah! They don't even know what I did to them." All at once she stopped, seriously assuming a countenance of terror. "Oh, but the critics—what will the monsters say! They never like it when the audience is too enthusiastic."