Then a little cloud would gather over her eyes, and then this other being
would rise as if out of her very entrails and recreate her, fashioning her
to its own image and likeness.
She did not answer when she was spoken to, and when the question was
repeated, she awoke with a little start. Dinner was eaten in morbid
silence, with painful and fitful efforts to appear interested in each
other. Walking to the theatre, they once took the wrong turning and had to
ask the way. At the stage door they smiled painfully, nodded, glad to part.
Hubert went up to Montague Ford's room. He found the comedian on a low
stool, seated before a low table covered with brushes and cosmetics, in
front of a triple glass.
'My dear friend, do not trouble me now. I am thinking of my part.'
Hubert turned to go.
'Stay a moment,' cried the actor. 'You know when the husband meets the wife
he has divorced?'
Hubert remembered the moment referred to, and, with anxious, doubting eyes,
the comedian sought from the author justification for some intonations and
gestures which seemed to him to form part and parcel of the nature of the
man whose drunkenness he had so admirably depicted on his face.
'"_This is most unfortunate, very unlucky--very, my dear Louisa; but----_"
'"_I am no longer obliged to bear with your insults; I can now defend
myself against you.
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