because he had not seen he had persuaded himself
that there was nothing to see. And now, in that last sudden flaming of
Lucia's ardour, he saw what he had missed.

They parted amicably, with a promise on Lucia's part that she would
stay with Edith in the summer.

By the time he returned to town he was very sure of what he saw. It
had become a platitude to say that Keith Rickman was a great poet
after the publication of _The Triumph of Life_. The interesting, the
burning question was whether he were not, if anything, a greater
dramatist. By the time Lucia came to Hampstead that point also had
been settled, when the play had been actually running for three weeks.
Its success was only sufficient to establish his position and no more.
He himself required no more; but his friends still waited anxiously
for what they regarded as the crucial test, the introduction of the
new dramatist to a picked audience in Paris in the autumn.

Lucia had come up with Kitty Palliser to see the great play. She
looked wretchedly ill. Withdrawn as far as possible into the darkness
of the box, she sat through the tremendous Third Act apparently
without a sign of interest or emotion. Kitty watched her anxiously
from time to time. She wondered whether she were over-tired, or
overwrought, or whether she had expected something different and were
disappointed with Keith's tragedy. Kitty herself wept openly and
unashamed. But to Lucia, who knew that tragedy by heart, it was as if
she were a mere spectator of a life she herself had once lived
passionately and profoundly. With every word and gesture of the actors
she felt that there passed from her possession something of Keith
Rickman's genius, something sacred, intangible, and infinitely dear;
that the triumphant movement of the drama swept between him and her,
remorselessly dividing them. She was realizing for the first time that
henceforth he would belong to the world and not to her. And yet the
reiterated applause sounded to her absurd and meaningless. Why were
these people insisting on what she had known so well, had seen so long
beforehand?

She was glad that Horace was not with her. But when he came out of his
study to greet them on their return she turned aside into the room and
called him to her. It was then that she triumphed.

"Well, Horace, he has worked his miracle."

"I always said he would."

"You doubted--once."

"Once, perhaps, Lucia. But now, like you, I believe."

"Like me