I am a sentimental old woman. For all through that evening of beautiful pictures and beautiful colour, I sat with my thought hovering about Bonnie and that young Faint Heart. And yet I am not ashamed of that. What better could my thought hover round than such a joy, trembling into being?
“Pelleas,” I whispered, “O, Pelleas. Look at those people there, and there, and down there. They don’t know what a charming secret is happening.”
“Pooh!” said Pelleas, “they never do know. Besides,” he added, “maybe they know one of their own.”
“Maybe they do,” I thought, and looked with new eyes on that watching half-circle, with moving fans and fluttering scarfs. That is the best thing about an audience: the little happy secrets that are in the hearts.
When “The Return of Endymion” was announced I was in the pleasantest excitement. For I love these hours when Love walks unmasked before me and I am able to say: Such an one loves such an one and O, I wish them well! The music sank to a single strain that beckoned to the curtain of vines behind the portico; the lights were lowered and a ripple of expectation, or so I fancied, ran here and there. And in the same instant I heard beside me a familiar voice.
“Good setting for ’em, by Jove!” it said, and there was Hobart Eddy, dropped down between Pelleas and me.
“Hobart,” I said excitedly, “Hobart Eddy! This is your tableau.”
He smiled, his familiar smile of utter sweetness, and rested his chin on his hand and looked at the stage.
“No, Aunt Etarre,” he said; “see.”
Before the portico the curtain of vines parted to the tremble of the violins. There was the slope, flower-spangled like the slope on which we sat and across which, two nights ago, Pelleas and I had fancied ourselves to be looking on immortal things. And there on the flowers lay Diana asleep, her hair spread on the green, the crescent glittering on her forehead, her white robe sweeping her sandaled feet. This was Bonnie, dear little maid, and it was her hour; she would never again be so beautiful before the whole world.