Dorian Gray grew pale as he watched her.  Neither of his friends dared to say anything to him.  She seemed to them to be absolutely incompetent.  They were horribly disappointed.

Yet they felt that the true test of any Juliet is the balcony scene of the second act.  They waited for that.  If she failed there, there was nothing in her.

She looked charming as she came out in the moonlight.  That could not be denied.  But the staginess of her acting was unbearable, and grew worse as she went on.  Her gestures became absurdly artificial.  She over-emphasized everything that she had to say.  The beautiful passage,—­

     Thou knowest the mask of night is on my face,
     Else would a maiden blush bepaint my cheek
     For that which thou hast heard me speak to-night,—­

[38] was declaimed with the painful precision of a school-girl who has been taught to recite by some second-rate professor of elocution.  When she leaned over the balcony and came to those wonderful lines,—­

                                Although I joy in thee,
     I have no joy of this contract to-night: 
     It is too rash, too unadvised, too sudden;
     Too like the lightning, which doth cease to be
     Ere one can say, “It lightens.”  Sweet, good-night! 
     This bud of love by summer’s ripening breath
     May prove a beauteous flower when next we meet,—­

she spoke the words as if they conveyed no meaning to her.  It was not nervousness.  Indeed, so far from being nervous, she seemed absolutely self-contained.  It was simply bad art.  She was a complete failure.

Even the common uneducated audience of the pit and gallery lost their interest in the play.  They got restless, and began to talk loudly and to whistle.  The Jew manager, who was standing at the back of the dress-circle, stamped and swore with rage.  The only person unmoved was the girl herself.

When the second act was over there came a storm of hisses, and Lord Henry got up from his chair and put on his coat.  “She is quite beautiful, Dorian,” he said, “but she can’t act.  Let us go.”

“I am going to see the play through,” answered the lad, in a hard, bitter voice.  “I am awfully sorry that I have made you waste an evening, Harry.  I apologize to both of you.”

“My dear Dorian, I should think Miss Vane was ill,” interrupted Hallward.  “We will come some other night.”

“I wish she was ill,” he rejoined.  “But she seems to me to be simply callous and cold.  She has entirely altered.  Last night she was a great artist.  To-night she is merely a commonplace, mediocre actress.”

“Don’t talk like that about any one you love, Dorian.  Love is a more wonderful thing than art.”