try enlarged one's horizon. One could experience excess and satiety
without the inconvenience of learning what to do with one's hands in a
drawing-room! When the characters all spoke at once and I missed some of
the phrases they flashed at each other, I was in misery. I strained my
ears and eyes to catch every exclamation.

The actress who played Marguerite was even then old-fashioned, though
historic. She had been a member of Daly's famous New York company, and
afterward a "star" under his direction. She was a woman who could not be
taught, it is said, though she had a crude natural force which carried
with people whose feelings were accessible and whose taste was not
squeamish. She was already old, with a ravaged countenance and a physique
curiously hard and stiff. She moved with difficulty--I think she was lame--I
seem to remember some story about a malady of the spine. Her Armand was
disproportionately young and slight, a handsome youth, perplexed in the
extreme. But what did it matter? I believed devoutly in her power to
fascinate him, in her dazzling loveliness. I believed her young, ardent,
reckless, disillusioned, under sentence, feverish, avid of pleasure. I
wanted to cross the footlights and help the slim-waisted Armand in the
frilled shirt to convince her that there was still loyalty and devotion in
the world. Her sudden illness, when the gayety was at its height, her
pallor, the handkerchief she crushed against her lips, the cough she
smothered under the laughter while Gaston kept playing the piano
lightly--it all wrung my heart. But not so much as her cynicism in the long
dialogue with her lover which followed. How far was I from questioning her
unbelief! While the charmingly sincere young man pleaded with
her--accompanied by the orchestra in the old "Traviata" duet, "misterioso,
misterioso!"--she maintained her bitter skepticism, and the curtain fell on
her dancing recklessly with the others, after Armand had been sent away
with his flower.

Between the acts we had no time to forget. The orchestra kept sawing away
at the "Traviata" music, so joyous and sad, so thin and far-away, so
clap-trap and yet so heart-breaking. After the second act I left Lena in
tearful contemplation of the ceiling, and went out into the lobby to
smoke. As I walked about there I congratulated myself that I had not
brought some Lincoln girl who would talk during the waits about the Junior
dances, or whether the cadets would camp at