uld say was: 'It's all imagination ... as if imagination were not
the most terrible thing in the world.... All that is wrong with the poor
mad people is imagination.... Shane, I was like some poor cripple
holding out his deformity to the passers-by, asking for help.... All he
would want was money, but I wanted ... oh, I don't know what I
wanted....

"And, then, Shane, I would go into a church, and pray, and wait,
kneeling there, for something to happen.... It never happened.... Then I
would laugh. People used to turn and look at me.... I began to hate
them. I grew proud. I hated them more and more....

"I said I'd get back to work, and forget it all.... I was made as I was
made.... Accept it.... I thought I could.... I was to play _Lady
Macbeth_ in Nottingham.

"You know how she enters, Shane. She comes in reading a letter. She is
alone on the stage, in _Macbeth's_ castle of Inverness: '"They met me in
the day of success,"' she reads--_Macbeth_ is writing of the witches in
the desert place: '"and I have learned by the perfectest report, they
have more in them than mortal knowledge."' I came on as I always came
on.... And the moment I left the wings, Shane, saw the audience, a
strange thing happened.... Illusion died, not died ... but was dead....
And there I was supposed to be reading a letter that had never been
written by people who had never possibly an existence, before an
audience who had paid a little money to be amused.... I couldn't read
it. I just couldn't....

"Behind me in the wings they were prompting, whispering fiercely.... But
I couldn't.... I stood there.... Then I said: I'll go off the stage. But
I couldn't do that even.... My feet were shackled to the ground.... I
seemed to have been charmed.... My hand fell to my side.... And then a
panic came. My knees hit one another. My teeth chattered ... awful,
awful....

"There was such a silence. The audience stirred, whispered.... Then some
one laughed.... Never laugh, Shane, suddenly, with me.... I crumpled up.
They rang the curtain down ... I stole away to Ireland.... Whenever I
am not hating--enough, the thought of that laugh comes to me...." She
shivered on her seat.

"That was only nervousness, Granya. Somebody got nervous and laughed."

"No, Shane, no."

"They talk of people laughing in the face of death. It's just a nervous
action, Granya."

"I tell you, no, Shane." She grew vehement. "It's a cruel country,
England. And Shane, they hate us I