He might have been clockwork. Directly after this I made an ineffectual
attempt to resign my theatrical work. But Barnaby persisted in talking
about the Polywhiddle Divorce all the time I was with him, and I could get
no opportunity of saying what I wished.

And then Delia's manner began to change towards me. The ease of our
intercourse vanished. I felt she was learning to dislike me. I grinned,
and capered, and scowled, and posed at her in a thousand ways, and
knew--with what a voiceless agony!--that I did it all the time. I tried to
resign again, and Barnaby talked about "X" and "Z" and "Y" in the _New
Review,_ and gave me a strong cigar to smoke, and so routed me. And
then I walked up the Assyrian Gallery in the manner of Irving to meet
Delia, and so precipitated the crisis.

"Ah!--_Dear_!" I said, with more sprightliness and emotion in my
voice than had ever been in all my life before I became (to my own
undoing) a Dramatic Critic.

She held out her hand rather coldly, scrutinising my face as she did so. I
prepared, with a new-won grace, to walk by her side. "Egbert," she said,
standing still, and thought. Then she looked at me.

I said nothing. I felt what was coming. I tried to be the old Egbert
Craddock Cummins of shambling gait and stammering sincerity, whom she
loved, but I felt even as I did so that I was a new thing, a thing of
surging emotions and mysterious fixity--like no human being that ever
lived, except upon the stage. "Egbert," she said, "you are not yourself."

"Ah!" Involuntarily I clutched my diaphragm and averted my head (as is the
way with them).

"There!" she said.

"_What do you mean_?" I said, whispering in vocal italics--you know
how they do it--turning on her, perplexity on face, right hand down, left
on brow. I knew quite well what she meant. I knew quite well the dramatic
unreality of my behaviour. But I struggled against it in vain. "What do
you mean?" I said, and, in a kind of hoarse whisper, "I don't understand!"

She really looked as though she disliked me. "What do you keep on posing
for?" she said. "I don't like it. You didn't use to."

"Didn't use to!" I said slowly, repeating this twice. I glared up and down
the gallery with short, sharp glances. "We are alone," I said swiftly.
"_Listen!_" I poked my forefinger towards her, and glared at her.
"I am under a curse."

I saw her hand tighten upon her sunshade. "You are under some bad
influence or other," said Delia. "You sho