Page:Elizabeth's Pretenders.djvu/168

Rh "That does not sound very dramatic. Do the pictures speak?"

"No—no!" he returned, impatiently. "The passion eats into her being. She becomes possessed by her love for those men whose pictures only she has seen. A splendid idea—so original!"

"More suited for a tableau, I should say. I thought a drama wanted action?"

"Oh! there will be action afterwards; but the subtlety of that situation in the first act will strike the keynote;" and he fixed his large onyx eyes upon her.

"I prefer modern subjects," observed Elizabeth. "I hate togas, and helmets, and Turkish trousers, and flowing robes on the stage. They alienate my sympathy."

"Passion," said the poet, "is of no age, no costume, no conntry. Bewigged men, like Corneille and Racine, make classic subjects dry, bloodless. It is given to us poets of the dying century to take those beautiful dead myths from their grave and clothe them with flesh, and give them passionate human voices. Moi qui vous parle shall do so!"

He ran his fingers through his dishevelled locks, and sought to bum her up with the ardour of his gaze. Elizabeth turned sharply round; the curtain was rising on the second act, and she fixed her eager eyes upon the stage. She was soon absorbed in the play; as little heedful of the intermittent conversation between Madame Belcour and Narishkine, as she was of the fact that a head far back in the orchestra stalls was watching her attentively.

Alaric Baring had left the pension soon after the