"Bah! I have no patience with you. You are as much a child as ever—as when you used to whimper in a makebelieve way, and cause your mother to laugh and cry together over your natural turn for acting."
"My natural turn for acting is going—is nearly gone," said she, with a smile; "and that is what I am afraid about. I am beginning to fear a lot of faces."
"Then why will you remain in such a dreadfully lonely place as this mountain inn? That it is which breeds strange fancies in you, my girl, don't doubt of it. Afraid of faces! Didn't you use to tell me that you were never conscious of seeing a face at all when you were on the stage?"
"I may have said so," she replied, musingly. "I don't think I ever did see faces—except as vague orange-coloured lamps in a sort of ruddy darkness—over the blaze of the footlights, you know. Certainly I never thought of them, nor heeded them. When I went off, and heard the noise of their hands and feet, it seemed like the sound of some machine with which I had no concern. I don't think I ever feared an audience in my life. My mother used to be my audience, as she stood in the wings and looked at me with the half-smile and kindly eyes I remember so well; and then I used to try to please you, you know, and never succeeded, as you also know, Lady Jane; and lately I have not thought of pleasing anybody, but of satisfying a sort of delirium that came over me."
"You never pleased me! You wicked creature! If I were blind and came into a theatre where I heard you playing your 'Juliet,' my eyes would open of their own accord."
"That time has passed over, Lady Jane. I am afraid of going to England. I should see all the faces now, and wonder what the people were saying of my hands outstretched, or of my kneeling posture, or of my elocution. I feel that if I were to get up just now, in this boat, and speak two sentences——"
"You would have us both laughing. But did you ever try before, my dear, to act to a scene? You might as well try to speak to an empty theatre as to that horrible loneliness over there. It was Mr. Bridges, the stage-manager at N——, if you remember, Miss Annie, who used to rehearse in the morning his speech before the curtain—used to wave his hand and smile to the empty benches, and then bow himself out backward. But at night, when the people were there, he always forgot the smile and the wave of the hand, and mumbled like a schoolboy. And as for your not being able to act when you hear the stir of a crowded house on the other side of the curtain, and know there are a dozen bouquets waiting for you in the boxes, why it's nonsense, my dear."
"I am afraid of it none the less, mother, and I shall dread putting myself to the test."
"All the result of this living out of the world," said Mrs. Christmas, dogmatically. "Say, shall we start to-morrow morning, Miss Annie?"
"Yes."