The curtain was drawn. It showed some reluctance and had to be assisted by the King. Gertrude was the Fairy Gruffanuff, and Bennett Lawrie was Prince Bulbo, with a tenor song much too high for his light baritone voice. The entertainment was very indifferent in quality, but it seemed to give great pleasure to the performers, especially to Bennett Lawrie, the Bottom of the company. He acted with extraordinary intensity. He seemed to have hypnotised himself into the belief that he was actually a Prince, so that he was extremely comic and yet very pathetic. His legs were very thin, large at the knees and more than a little bowed, and in his pink tights they looked enormously long--a figure of fun, and yet he was compelling and quixotically heroic. He was right out of the picture, and nothing else in it seemed to exist for him. When he was on the stage nothing else existed for his audience of two. He had naturally the gift of making his personality surge over the footlights into the auditorium, and he seemed to exult in the exercise of his power without in the least caring what he did with it. Serge admired him, but on the whole disliked his exhibition. He whispered to his father: "Sheer blatant egoism." "Who?" "That boy." "He's very funny. Queer, he never says a word when he comes to the house. He is preternaturally solemn and always looks as though he were on the point of bursting into tears." "I've seen many young men like that here. I fancy they don't get enough to eat." Bennett appeared on the stage again, and Francis began to shake with laughter at his antics. A moment later and he was brushing a tear-drop from his nose. When the rehearsal was over Serge went out and bought a bottle of port at the public-house next door but one to the church, a cake and some biscuits, and took them in to the actors assembled in the green-room--one of the two small class-rooms of the school. He found Gertrude in tears and threatening to throw up her part, Frederic shouting at her, Bennett Lawrie supporting her, and the whole company looking very odd and unreal with the paint thick on their faces or melting down into their collars. Francis was making himself amiable and telling everybody in turn that he had never enjoyed any performance so well. Minna, wearing an absurd golden wig, said: "I'm sure Serge didn't like it." "I was interested," he replied. And indeed he had found it absorbing to see how much these people, when they were pretending to be some one else, revealed their characters as they rarely did in ordinary life. He was immensely sorry for them all without exactly knowing why. Without knowing why, he excepted Minna. He had a curious faith in Minna. In Gertrude he believed not at all. She was in love with Bennett Lawrie. That much was clear, but she was in love idiotically. In the green-room he heard her covering Bennett with gross flattery which he gulped down fatuously. XII ANNETTE