“Great Socialist statesmen aren’t made, they’re stillborn,” replied Youghal.
“What is the play about to-night?” asked a pale young woman who had taken no part in the talk.
“I don’t know,” said Lady Caroline, “but I hope it’s dull. If there is any brilliant conversation in it I shall burst into tears.”
In the front row of the upper circle a woman with a restless starling-voice was discussing the work of a temporarily fashionable composer, chiefly in relation to her own emotions, which she seemed to think might prove generally interesting to those around her.
“Whenever I hear his music I feel that I want to go up into a mountain and pray. Can you understand that feeling?”
The girl to whom she was unburdening herself shook her head.
“You see, I’ve heard his music chiefly in Switzerland, and we were up among the mountains all the time, so it wouldn’t have made any difference.”
“In that case,” said the woman, who seemed to have emergency emotions to suit all geographical conditions, “I should have wanted to be in a great silent plain by the side of a rushing river.”
“What I think is so splendid about his music—” commenced another starling-voice on the further side of the girl. Like sheep that feed greedily before the coming of a storm the starling-voices seemed impelled to extra effort by the knowledge of four imminent intervals of acting during which they would be hushed into constrained silence.
In the back row of the dress circle a late-comer, after a cursory glance at the programme, had settled down into a comfortable narrative, which was evidently the resumed thread of an unfinished taxi-drive monologue.