"And you expect to play great parts?" Madame Hilary repeated.
There was no answer. As the silence lengthened, the audience looked critically at her; she had spoken hitherto with the prattling candour of her class, and the question was hardly an assault on her professional diffidence.
"And are you in love?" pursued Madame Hilary without pity.
The girl looked at her in silence but still without any expression of resentment or confusion.
"Are you never afraid of meeting some man and having to retire from the stage?"
At the third silence Summertown observed loudly:
"This is a blinking frost, you know. I said it was, from the beginning. She can't make you answer, if you don't want to."
The penetrating voice brought Madame Hilary to her feet a second time.
"Mr. Webster! Where is Mr. Webster?" she demanded. "Please! I cannot go on—like this. You ask this gentleman to go away, and I continue. Otherwise, no! I cannot."
"Oh, I say, no offence meant, you know," Summertown pleaded.