"Impudence all the same. When the rehearsal is over I must have a little conversation with Miss Denny." She showed her white teeth in a smile. Alwynne caught her up uneasily-- "Clare--you're not going to scold? It wouldn't be fair. You know you're as pleased as Punch, really." Clare shot a look at her, but Alwynne's face was innocent and anxious. She shrugged her shoulders. "Am I? I suppose I am. I don't know. On my word, Alwynne, I don't know! But run along, my deputy. There's an agitated orb rolling in your direction from the join of the curtains." Alwynne fled. The opening scene of the second division of the play--as Clare had planned it--showed Arthur a prisoner to John and the old queen. The child's face was changed, his manner strained; his startled eyes darted restlessly from Hubert to the king and back again to Hubert; the pair seemed to fascinate him. Yet he shrank from their touch and from Elinor's embrace, only to check the instinctive movement with pitiful, propitiatory haste, and to submit, his small fists clenched, to their caresses. His eyes never left their faces; you saw the tide of fear rising in his soul. Not till the interview with Hubert, however, was the morbid drift of the conception fully apparent. He hung upon the man, smiling with white lips; he fawned; he babbled; he cajoled; marshalled his poor defences of tears and smiles, frail defiance and wooing surrender, with an awful, childish cunning. He watched the man as a frightened bird watches a cat; turned as he turned, confronting him with every muscle tense. His high whisper premised a voice too weak with terror to shriek. Yet at the entrance of the attendants there came a cry that made Clare shiver where she sat. It was fear incarnate. Clare fidgeted. It was too bad of Louise.... And what had Alwynne been thinking of? A free hand, indeed! Too much of a free hand altogether! The fact that she was listening to a piece of acting, that, in a theatre, would have overwhelmed her with admiration, added to her annoyance. A school performance was not the place for brilliant improprieties. Certainly impropriety--this laborious exposure of a naked emotion was, in such a milieu, essentially improper--Louise must be crazy! And in what unholy school had she learned it all--this baby of thirteen? And what on earth would staff and school say? She stole a look at her colleagues. Some were interested, she could see, but obviously puzzled. A couple were whispering together. A third had chosen the moment to yawn.