I sought my place, and dropped into the seat beside Tom.  The fourth act was beginning, so that I had time to speculate upon my interview, but could find no hope of solution.  Finally, I abandoned guessing, to admire Claire.  As the play went on, her acting grew more and more transcendent.  Lines which I had heard from Tom’s lips and scoffed at, were now fused with subtle meaning and passion.  Scenes which I had condemned as awkward and heavy, became instinct with exquisite pathos.  There comes a point in acting at which criticism ceases, content to wonder; this point it was clear that my love had touched.  The new play was a triumphant success.

“So,” said Tom, before the last act, “Claire carries a yellow fan, does she?  I looked everywhere for you at first, and only caught sight of you for an instant by the merest chance.  You behaved rather shabbily in giving me no chance of criticism, for I never caught a glimpse 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?