Page:Three stories by Vítězslav Hálek (1886).pdf/55

 Then the curtain was drawn up and they saw a wood, and here both bethought them of that wood which stretched behind their hillside; they bethought them of the hollow tree and of that river which ran below the hillside; they were half inclined to weep, and again they were half inclined to rapture. But all was different in that wood behind the curtain. There people walked and conversed and acted together, and our two spectators felt even that wood behind the curtain grow dear to them. Their whole attention was fixed upon it, and everything happened quite naturally in it, and like real life. Now they were constrained to laugh, and the next moment they were fain to cry.

The play was over, and in the body of the hall twilight reigned. When they listened they seemed to hear their own names called, and that by many voices. It really was their names, and before they could recover from their surprise they felt themselves touched by hands, many hands, and again before they could. recover from their surprise, they were gently lifted off their feet, and pushed behind the curtain into the wood, and a hundred throats clamoured for Venik to play and Krista to sing.

It was like a revelation. They did not know how it all happened, but they sang and played. It half seemed to them as though they were standing on their own hillside, and yet somehow it was quite different. When they had concluded the theatre