No sooner had Miss Warren come upon the stage, in her favourite part of Fanny in “The Clandestine Marriage,” revived for the occasion, than I knew her as Madge Faringfield.  I bent forward, with staring eyes and gaping mouth; if I uttered any exclamation it was drowned in the sound of the hand-clapping that greeted her.  While she curtseyed and pleasantly smiled, in response to this welcome, I turned abruptly to Phil, my eyes betokening my recognition.  He nodded, without a word or any other movement, and continued to look at her, his face wearing a half-smiling expression of gentle gladness.

I knew, from my old acquaintance with him, that he was under so great emotion that he dared not speak.  It was, indeed, a cessation of secret anxiety to him, a joy such as only a constant lover can understand, to know that she was alive, well, with means of livelihood, and beautiful as ever.  Though she was now thirty-one, she looked, on the stage, not a day older than upon that sad night when he had thrown her from him, six years and more before—­nay, than upon that day well-nigh eleven years before, when he had bade her farewell to go upon his first campaign.  She was still as slender, still had the same girlish air and manner.

Till the curtain fell upon the act, we sat without audible remark, delighting our eyes with her looks, our ears with her voice, our hearts (and paining them at the same time) with the memories her every movement, every accent, called up.

“How shall we see her?” were Phil’s first words at the end of the act.

“We may be allowed to send our names, and see her in the greenroom,” said I.  “Or perhaps you know somebody who can take us there without any preliminaries.”

“Nay,” returned Philip, after a moment’s thought, “there will be other people there.  I shouldn’t like strangers to see—­you understand.  We shall wait till the play is over, and then go to the door where the players come out.  ’Twill take her some time to dress for going home—­we can’t miss her that way.”

I sympathised with his feelings against making their meeting a scene for the amusement of frivolous lookers-on, and we waited patiently enough.  Neither of us could have told, when the play was over, what was the story it presented.  Even Madge’s speeches we heard with less sense of their meaning than emotion at the sound of her voice.  If this was the case with me, how much more so, as I could see by side-glances at his face, was it with Philip!  Between the acts, we had little use for conversation.  One of our thoughts, though neither uttered it, was that, despite the reputation that play-actresses generally bore, a woman could live virtuously by the profession, and in it, and that several women since the famous Mrs. Bracegirdle were allowed to have done so.  ’Twas only necessary to look at our Madge, to turn the possibility in her case into certainty.