d render our performance unintelligible to that acute
and honourable minority which consents to be thwacked with aphorisms and
sentences and a fantastic delivery of the verities. While my Play goes
on, I must permit him to come forward occasionally. We are indeed in a
sort of partnership, and it is useless for me to tell him that he is not
popular and destroys my chance.

CHAPTER LII

"Don't blame yourself, my Wilfrid."

Emilia spoke thus, full of pity for him, and in her adorable,
deep-fluted tones, after the effective stop he had come to.

The 'my Wilfrid' made the owner of the name quiver with satisfaction. He
breathed: "You have forgiven me?"

"That I have. And there was indeed no blame. My voice has gone. Yes, but
I do not think it your fault."

"It was! it is!" groaned Wilfrid. "But, has your voice gone?" He leaned
nearer to her, drawing largely on the claim his incredulity had
to inspect her sweet features accurately. "You speak just as--more
deliciously than ever! I can't think you have lost it. Ah! forgive me!
forgive me!"

Emilia was about to put her hand over to him, but the prompt impulse was
checked by a simultaneous feminine warning within. She smiled, saying:
"'I forgive' seems such a strange thing for me to say;" and to convey
any further meaning that might comfort him, better than words could
do, she held on her smile. The smile was of the acceptedly feigned,
conventional character; a polished Surface: belonging to the passage
of the discourse, and not to the emotions. Wilfrid's swelling passion
slipped on it. Sensitively he discerned an ease in its formation and
disappearance that shot a first doubt through him, whether he really
maintained his empire in her heart. If he did not reign there, why had
she sent for him? He attributed the unheated smile to a defect in her
manner, that was always chargeable with something, as he remembered.
He began systematically to account for his acts: but the man was so
constituted that as he laid them out for pardon, he himself condemned
them most; and looking back at his weakness and double play, he broke
through his phrases to cry without premeditation: "Can you have loved me
then?"

Emilia's cheeks tingled: "Don't speak of that night in Devon," she
replied.

"Ah!" sighed he. "I did not mean then. Then you must have hated me."

"No; for, what did I say? I said that you would come to me--nothing
more. I hated that woman. You? Oh, no!"

"You loved