Once more Sheila was in the Odeon, but as one of the laity. When she entered the dark auditorium her eyes rejoiced at the huge, dusty, gold arch of the proscenium framing the deep brilliant canvas where the figures moved and spoke. It was a finer sight to her than any sunset or seascape or any of the works of mere nature, for they just happened; these canvas rocks and cloth flowers were made to fit a story. She preferred the human to the divine, and the theatrical to the real.
The play was good, the company worthy of the Odeon traditions. Even Dulcie was not bad, for Reben had subtly cast her as herself without telling her so. She played the phases of her personality that everybody recognized but Dulcie. The play was a comedy written by a gentle satirist with a passion for making a portrait of his own times. The character Dulcie enacted was that of a pretty and well-meaning girl of a telephonic past married into a group of snobs, through having fascinated a rich man with her cheerful voice. Dulcie could play innocence and amiability, for she was not intelligent enough to be anything but innocent, even in her vices, and she usually meant well even when she did her worst.
The author had selected Dulcie as his ideal for the rôle, but he had been at a loss how to tell her to play herself without hurting her feelings. She saved him by asking:
“Say, listen, should I play this part plebean or real refined?”
He hastened to answer, “Play it real refined.”
And she did. She was delicious to those who understood; and to those who didn’t she was admirable. Thus everybody was pleased.
Sheila would have enjoyed the rôle as a tour de force, or what she called a stunt, of character-playing. But she was glad that she was not playing it. She felt immortal longings in her for something less trivial than this quaint social photograph; something more earnest than any light satire.
She did not want to play that play, but she wanted to play—she smoldered with ambition. Her eyes reveled in the splendor of the theater, the well-groomed informality of the audience so eager to be swayed, in the boundless opportunity to feed the hungry people with the art of life. She felt at home. This was her native land. She breathed it all in with an almost voluptuous sense of well-being.
Bret, eying her instead of the stage, caught that contentment in her deep breathing, the alertness of her very nostrils relishing the atmosphere, the vivacity of her eager eyes. And his heart told him what her heart told her, that this was where she belonged.