Page:Harvey O'Higgins--Don-a-dreams.djvu/379

 She touched his arm to silence him as the lights were lowered and the curtain rose; and she let her hand remain on his sleeve either absent-mindedly, or as an apology for turning from him, or merely as a sort of place-mark in their conversation, like a finger on the page of an interrupted reading. It was to Don the tingling pole of an emotion that quivered through him electrically; he sat rigid, for fear that his slightest movement might break the current coming to him out of the darkness in a circuit of friendship and sympathy that joined her to him among all these strangers, secretly, like the hidden clasp of fingers. When, at length, she drew back slowly, he relaxed to an easier position with a sigh.

The play was a "costume drama" in which the love of a court beauty caused duels and intrigues and various dissensions among gentlemen in perukes and satin smalls; and Don listened and watched with his soul in his eyes. It inspired him with the desire to do great deeds, to be famous, to live a coloured and wonderful life. It filled him with high desires of love and magnanimity. It raised him above the sordid commonplaces of his commercial days. It intoxicated him with that wine of romance which makes the historical novel the cordial bottle of a shop-wearied civilization. Between the acts, to the quickened sympathy of the girl beside him, he freed himself of an almost vinous need of confiding to someone his ambitions, his vague plans, his shy hopes of a future as a playwright, laughing at himself tentatively, but touched to find that she did not laugh too. "I never had a chance to work before,"