quest of Ulick Dean.
She spied him sitting in the far corner, and wondered when he would look
in her direction, and then remembering what he had said about the
transmission of thought between sympathetic affinities, she sought to
reach him with hers. She closed her eyes so that she might concentrate
her will sufficiently for it to penetrate his brain. She sat tense with
her desire, her hands clenched for more than a minute, but he did not
answer to her will, and its tension relaxed in spite of herself. "He
sits there listening to the music as if he had never heard a note of it
before. Why does he not come to me?" As if in answer, Ulick got out of
his stall and walked toward the entrance, seemingly in the intention of
leaving the theatre. Evelyn felt that she must speak to him, and she was
about to call to one of the chorus and ask him to tell Mr. Dean that she
wanted to speak to him, but a vague inquietude seemed to awaken in him,
and he seemed uncertain whether to go or stay, and he looked round the
theatre as if seeking someone. He looked several times in the direction
of Evelyn's box without seeing her, and she was at last obliged to wave
her hand. Then the dream upon his face vanished, and his eyes lit up,
and his nod was the nod of one whose soul is full of interesting story.
He had one of those long Irish faces, all in a straight line, with flat,
slightly hollow cheeks, and a long chin. It was clean shaven, and a
heavy lock of black hair was always falling over his eyes. It was his
eyes that gave its sombre ecstatic character to his face. They were
large, dark, deeply set, singularly shaped, and they seemed to smoulder
like fires in caves, leaping and sinking out of the darkness. He was a
tall, thin young man, and he wore a black jacket and a large, blue
necktie, tied with the ends hanging loose over his coat. Evelyn received
him effusively, stretching both hands to him and telling him she was so
glad he had come. She said she was delighted with his melodies, and
would sing them as soon as she got an occasion. But he did not seem as
pleased as he should have done; and sitting, his eyes fixed on the
floor--now and then he muttered a word of thanks. His silence
embarrassed her, and she felt suddenly that the talk which she had been
looking forward to would be a failure, and she almost wished him out of
her box. Neither had spoken for some time, and, to break an awkward
silence, she said that she had been that morning at St. Joseph's. He
looked up; their eyes met unexpectedly, and she seemed to read an
impertinence in his eyes; they seemed to say, "I wonder how you dared go
there!" But his words contradicted the idea which she thought she had
read in his eyes. He asked her at once eagerly and sympathetically, if
she had seen her father. No, he was not there, and, growing suddenly
shy, she sought to change the conversation.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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