"They are calling for Claude!"
Charmian turned round to Susan Fleet. Susan was clapping her hands forcibly. She stood up as if to make her applause more audible.
The cries went up again. But in the stalls the applause seemed to be dying down, and Charmian had a moment of such acute, such exquisite apprehension, that always afterward she felt as if she had known the bitterness of death. Scarcely knowing what she did, and suddenly quite pale, she began to clap with Susan. She felt like one fighting against terrible odds. And the enemy sickened her because it was full of a monstrous passivity. It seemed to exhale inertia. To fight against it was like struggling against being smothered by a gigantic feather bed.
But she clapped, she clapped. And as she did so, moved to look round, she saw Mrs. Shiffney and Madame Sennier watching her through two pairs of opera-glasses.
Her hands fell apart, dropped to her sides mechanically.
Still cries, separated, far, it seemed, from one another, went up.
"Heath! Heath!" Charmian now heard distinctly.
"Gillier! Author! Author!"
The curtains moved. One was drawn back. A strangely shaped gap showed itself. But for a long moment no one emerged through this gap. And again the applause died down. Charmian sat quite still, her arms hanging, her eyes fixed on the gap, her cheeks still very white.
Just as the applause seemed fading beyond recall Claude stepped through the gap, followed by Armand Gillier.