of a
famous actress in _Hedda Gabler_.... Bedient was early. The curtain
interested him. It pictured an ancient Grecian ruin, a gloomy, heavy
thing, but not inartistic. Beneath was a couplet from Kingsley:

"So fleet the works of men, back to their earth again,
Ancient and holy things fade like a dream."

Sensitive to such effects, he sat, musing and contemplative, when
suddenly his spirit was imperiously aroused by the orchestra. The
'celli had opened the _Andante_ from the C Minor Symphony. For ten
minutes, the music held his every sense.... It unfolded as of old, but
not its full message. There was a meaning in it _for him_! He heard the
three voices--man, woman and angel. It was the woman's tragedy. The
lustrous Third Presence was for her. The man's figure was obscure,
disintegrate.... Bedient was so filled with the mystery, that the play
had but little surface of his consciousness during the first act. He
enjoyed it, but could not give all he had. Finally, as _Hedda_ was
ordering the young writer to drink wine to get "vine-leaves in his
hair," there was an explosion back of the scenes. Bedient, as did many
others, thought at first it belonged to the piece. The faces of the
players fell away in thick gloom, the voices sank into crazy echoes,
and the curtain went down. Bedient's last look at the stage brought him
the impression of squirming chaos. Fire touched the curtain behind,
disfiguring and darkening the pictured ruin. Then a woman near him
screamed. The back of a chair snapped, and now scores took up the
woman's cry.

The crowd caught a succession of hideous ideas: of being trapped and
burned, of inadequate exits, murderous gases, bodies piled at the
doors--all the detailed news-horror of former theatre disasters. And
the crowd did all it could to repeat the worst of these. Bedient
encountered an altogether new strength, the strength of a frenzied
mass, and to his nostrils came a sick odor from the fear-mad. The
lights had not been turned on with the fall of the curtain. Untrained
to cities, Bedient was astonished at the fright of the people, the
fright of the men!... The lines of _Hedda_ recurred to him, and he
called out laughingly:

"Now's the time for 'vine-leaves in your hair,' men!"

He moved among the seats free from the aisle. A body lay at his feet.
Groping forward, his hand touched a woman's hair. He smiled at the
thought that here was one for _him_ to help, and lifted her, turning to