In front of this dividing line, SHY and Alwyn remained always in the natural plane; behind it, Ornis and Tacita remained always in the supernatural. Their scenes together were enacted near or beside the fallen tree trunk.
In the scene of his conversion, Stark was lured into the higher plane by Tacita; while Quercus alone among the characters skipped back and forth from one plane to the other.
As audience, the non-participating spectators sat in dominoes of brown, flanked on either side by the bird-participants in their pied bird costumes. These latter watched the performance until, at the finale, they were summoned by Quercus upon the constructed stage.
There, when all had been marshalled, entered the Cardinal Bird [enacted by Mr. Herbert Adams, the sculptor], accompanied by two small scarlet-tanager acolytes [boys], bearing great candles, to light a crimson cushion held by the Cardinal. On the cushion lay an open scroll.
This scroll, itself a sheet of parchment-like paper from the original press of Benjamin Franklin, had been inscribed by Mr. Stephen Parrish with a Sonnet-Epilogue,
Cardinal Bird and Hummingbird
composed by the author of the masque and signed by all of its participants, with their real names opposite the species of birds they severally impersonated.
Moving slowly forward to music till he stood before President and Mrs. Wilson, where they sat near the centre of the first row of the audience, the Cardinal Bird, with simple dignity, read from the scroll this