And so, in the fading light of that grey December afternoon I left her standing there.

Mad and distraught with the passion of that parting, I sat that evening in the shadow of my box and waited for the curtain to rise upon “Francesca.”  The Coliseum was crowded to the roof, for it was known that Clarissa Lambert’s illness had been merely a slight indisposition, and to-night she would again be acting.  I was too busy with my own hard thoughts to pay much attention at first, but I noticed that my box was the one nearest to the stage, in the tier next above it.  So that once more I should hear my darling’s voice, and see her form close to me.  Once or twice I vaguely scanned the audience.  The boxes opposite were full; but, of course, I could see nothing of my own side of the theatre.  After a moment’s listless glance, I leaned back in the shadow and waited.

I do not know who composed the overture.  It is haunted by one exquisite air, repeated, fading into variations, then rising once more only to sink into the tender sorrow of a minor key.  I have heard it but twice in my life, but the music of it is with me to this day.  Then, as I heard it, it carried me back to the hour when Tom and I sat expectant in this same theatre, he trembling for his play’s success, I for the sight of my love.  Poor Tom!  The sad melody wailed upwards as though it were the voice of the wind playing about his grave, every note breathing pathos or suspiring in tremulous anguish.  Poor Tom!  Yet your love was happier than mine; better to die with Claire’s kiss warm upon the lips than to live with but the memory of it.

The throbbing music had ended, and the play began.  As before, the audience were without enthusiasm at first, but to-night they knew they had but to wait, and they did so patiently; so that when at last Claire’s voice died softly away at the close of her opening song, the hushed house was suddenly shaken to its roof with the storm and tumult of applause.

There she stood, serene and glowing, as one that had never known pain.  My very eyes doubted.  On her face was no sign of suffering, no trace of a tear.  Was she, then, utterly without heart?  In my memory I retraced the scene of that afternoon, and all my reason acquitted her.  Yet, as she stood there in her glorious epiphany, illumined with the blazing lights, and radiant in the joy and freshness of youth, I could have doubted whether, after all, Clarissa Lambert and Claire Luttrell were one and the same.

There was one thing which I did not fail, however, to note as strange.  She did not once glance in the direction of my box, but kept her eyes steadily averted.  And it then suddenly dawned upon me that she must be playing with a purpose; but what that purpose was I could not guess.

Whatever it was, she was acting magnificently and had for the present completely surrendered herself to her art.  Grand as that art had been on the first night of “Francesca,” the power of that performance was utterly eclipsed to-night.  Once between the acts I heard two voices in the passage outside my box—­