r profile between himself and the
stage. He was touched by the youthful seriousness of her expression. In
spite of the experiences she must have had, and of the twenty-four
years to which she owned, she struck him as intrinsically young; and he
wondered how so evanescent a quality could have been preserved in the
desiccating Murrett air. As the play progressed he noticed that her
immobility was traversed by swift flashes of perception. She was not
missing anything, and her intensity of attention when Cerdine was on the
stage drew an anxious line between her brows.

After the first act she remained for a few minutes rapt and motionless;
then she turned to her companion with a quick patter of questions. He
gathered from them that she had been less interested in following
the general drift of the play than in observing the details of its
interpretation. Every gesture and inflection of the great actress's
had been marked and analyzed; and Darrow felt a secret gratification in
being appealed to as an authority on the histrionic art. His interest in
it had hitherto been merely that of the cultivated young man curious of
all forms of artistic expression; but in reply to her questions he found
things to say about it which evidently struck his listener as impressive
and original, and with which he himself was not, on the whole,
dissatisfied. Miss Viner was much more concerned to hear his views
than to express her own, and the deference with which she received his
comments called from him more ideas about the theatre than he had ever
supposed himself to possess.

With the second act she began to give more attention to the development
of the play, though her interest was excited rather by what she called
"the story" than by the conflict of character producing it. Oddly
combined with her sharp apprehension of things theatrical, her knowledge
of technical "dodges" and green-room precedents, her glibness about
"lines" and "curtains", was the primitive simplicity of her attitude
toward the tale itself, as toward something that was "really happening"
and at which one assisted as at a street-accident or a quarrel overheard
in the next room. She wanted to know if Darrow thought the lovers
"really would" be involved in the catastrophe that threatened them,
and when he reminded her that his predictions were disqualified by his
having already seen the play, she exclaimed: "Oh, then, please don't
tell me what's going to happen!" and the nex