audience, for all its excitement
and uproarious enthusiasm. He was aware of something predatory and
vulturine in it, the very hideous quality that in his own work he had
portrayed so exactly that no one could endure it, and his own soul had
sickened and grown weary until the day when he had met this child of
freedom.... It was as though he saw her being done to death before his
eyes, and this appalling experience took on a ghastly symbolical
significance--richness and lewdness crushing out of existence their
enemies youth and joy. Towards that this London was drifting. It had
no other purpose.... Ay, this audience was Caliban, coveting Miranda,
hating Ariel, lusting to murder Ferdinand--youth, enchantment, love,
all were to be done to death. Clara's performance was to him like the
last choking song of youth. It should have been, he knew she meant it
to be, like all art, a prophecy.

What malign Fate had dogged her to trip her feet, so soon, to lead her
by such strange ways to the success that kills, the success worshipped
in London, the success won at the cost of every living quality.

He watched her very closely, and began to understand her contempt. Her
touch of burlesque made him roar with laughter, so that he was scowled
at by his neighbours in the dress circle, and he began to feel more
hopeful. He felt certain that this was the beginning and the end for
her, and he supposed that she would marry her Lord and retire into an
easy, cultured life. He had liked Verschoyle on his one meeting with
him, and knew that he was to be trusted.

Truly the words of the play were marvellously apt, when Clara sang,--

'Merrily, merrily shall I live now
Under the blossom that hangs on the bough.'

Rodd looked down at Verschoyle leaning out of his box, and felt sure
that this was to be her way out. More of this painted mummery she
could not endure. She could mould a good, simple creature like
Verschoyle to her ways and become a great personage. So comforted, he
heard the closing scenes of the play in all its truthful dignity, and
he looked round at the sated audience wondering how many of them
attached any meaning to the words hurled at them with such amazing
power.

'The charm dissolves apace,
And as the morning steals upon the night,
Melting the darkness, so their rising senses
Begin to chase the ignorant fumes that mantle
Their clearer reason.

Their understanding
Begins to