se of her. I hope she admired--Hallo! she's gone!"

I followed his gaze, and saw that Box No. 7 was no longer occupied by
the fan.

"I suppose you saw her off? Well, I do not admire your taste, I must
confess--nor Claire's--to go when Francesca was beginning to touch
her grandest height. Whew! you lovers make me blush for you."

"Tom." I said, anxious to lead him from all mention of Claire,
"you must forgive me for having laughed at your play."

"Forgive you! I will forgive you if you weep during the next act;
only on that condition."

How shall I describe the last act? Those who read "Francesca" in its
published form can form no adequate idea of the enthusiasm in the
Coliseum that night. To them it is a skeleton; then it was clothed
with passionate flesh and blood, breathed, sobbed and wept in purest
pathos; to me, even now, as I read it again, it is charged with the
inspiration of that wonderful art, so true, so tender, that made its
last act a miracle. I saw old men sob, and young men bow their heads
to hide the emotion which they could not check. I saw that audience
which had come to criticise, tremble and break into tumultuous
weeping. Beside me, a greyheaded man was crying as any child.
Yet why do I go on? No one who saw Clarissa Lambert can ever
forget--no one who saw her not can ever imagine.

Tom had bowed his acknowledgments, the last flower had been flung,
the last cheer had died away as we stepped out into the Strand
together. The street was wrapped in the densest of November fogs.
So thick was it that the lamps, the shop windows, came into sight,
stared at us in ghostly weakness for a moment, and then were gone,
leaving us in Egyptian gloom. I could not hope to see Claire
to-night, and Tom was too modest to offer his congratulations until
the morning. Both he and I were too shaken by the scene just past
for many words, and outside the black fog caught and held us by the
throat.

Even in the pitchy gloom I could feel that Tom's step was buoyant.
He was treading already in imagination the path of love and fame.
How should I have the heart to tell him? How wither the chaplet that
already seemed to bind his brow?

Tom was the first to break the silence which had fallen upon us.

"Jasper, did you ever see or hear the like? Can a man help
worshipping her? But for her, 'Francesca' would have been hissed.
I know it, I could see it, and now, I suppose, I shall be famous.

"Famous!" conti