Once down one of these aisles a sudden veritable scene showed at the end of the perspective, through a wide door opening upon a room tinted in green, the color being very keen amidst the dun shadows without and the brilliant artificial illumination within. There, seemingly lounging or waiting, were groups of men and women, richly and quaintly attired, but with a prosaic every-day pose and gesture and expression of countenance, the effect curiously at variance with the suggestions of the antique garb they wore. This incongruity was not perceptible in a figure that he descried suddenly approaching, clad in a gown of soft shimmering white silk as in everlasting youth and beauty,--so radiant, so poetic, so unreal an apparition to the boy that Ned, stopping to stare, lost all sense of his identity. She, who was to be Ophelia, catching a glimpse of his pale, wistful, astonished little face in the glooms, with its big dark eyes and curling red hair, as he stood as if rooted to the spot, cast a half-amused smile on him as she passed. Her maid was following at a distance with a shawl, and Ned, suddenly realizing his peril, hastily darted behind one of the tombstones which even now were placed in readiness, awaiting the graveyard scene, and then once more dodged from flat to flat and from trestle to trestle. He hardly knew in what direction he was tending, till all at once a flood of light broke upon him and he stood in the wings. The broad spread of the stage lay before him,--gorgeous with the presence of royalty and soldiery, of lords and ladies, of jesters and pages,--the "counterfeit presentment" of the palaces of old, and of the splendid past. It was rounded by the dazzling crescent of the foot-lights that clasped this charmed sphere as the new moon clasps the old. There was a ceaseless shimmer above them, and through it he could see heads, heads, heads. The house was crowded from parquet to gallery. Now and then the audience broke into enthusiastic applause. As Ned stood staring it did not occur to him that he was in the direct way of any actor going on or coming off the stage, until a sudden step sounded close at hand behind the wing. It was only an accident that he did not electrify audience and players by rushing out upon the stage, for the powers behind the scenes had far more terrors for him than public opinion. As he shrank back toward the wall, looking eagerly about him for a refuge, he stumbled against the oddly fashioned chair in which Hamlet had sat during the second scene of the first act, and which now by accident or design had been thrust aside here. The devil sprang upon the rich crimson velvet cushions, and the Prince of Denmark was none the wiser.