Mr. Iglesias crossed the drawing-room, glad at heart, erect and stately as in the fulness of health. For a minute or so he stood looking out into the garden, at the stone basin full to the lip--in which the sparrows, relieved of the presence of the toy spaniels, washed with much fluttering of sooty wings--and at the spring flowers, beginning to close their delicate blossoms as the sun declined towards its setting in the gold and grey of the west. In the recovered stillness, those same spiritual presences, rare apprehensions, exquisite memories, mysterious invitations, once again obtained possession, coming forth, passing lightly to and fro, filling all the place. In aspect and sentiment they were benign, all fearfulness having gone from out them--they telling of fair things only, of human relations unbroken by treachery or self-seeking, unsullied by lust; telling, too, of godly endeavour faithfully to travel the road which leads to the far horizon touched by the illimitable glory of the Uncreated Light. But presently Dominic Iglesias became aware that he was very, very tired. He sat down in the chair again. "Lord have mercy. Christ have mercy," he murmured, crossing himself. "I think the day's work is over. I will sleep." That night Poppy St. John played as she had never played before; and her audience, taking her astonishing manifestation of talent as a compliment to themselves, cried with her and laughed with her in most wholehearted fashion. Antony Hammond, in the stage box on the right, turned to Adolphus Carr, his companion, saying: "Did I really write such admirable drama as this? I have girded at that term, 'creating a part,' as an example of the colossal vanity of the actor, and his very inadequate reverence for his maker, the playwright. But, I give you my word, after to-night I hide my diminished head. The player and playing are greater than any fondest conception of mine, when I put those words on paper." And Lionel Gordon, his habitual imperturbability altogether broken up by excitement, stamped up and down stammering: "Ge-ge-hanna, gehanna, what possesses the woman? I'd tour creation with her. She must be made to sign a three years' contract. If she can act like this there's nothing less than a cool half-million sterling in her." And Alaric Barking, lean and haggard, invalided home from South Africa, escaping for one evening from the ministrations of gentle Lady Constance Decies and his pretty _fiancee_, sat huddled together at the end of a row at the back of the pit, hoping, "The deuce! nobody would see him," with a choke in his throat. He would love, honour, and cherish his pretty, high-bred, innocent maiden; but Poppy's voice tore at his very vitals. And he asked himself how had he ever borne to give her up, forgetting, as is the habit of civilised man in such slightly humiliating circumstances, that it was Poppy herself, not he, who loved and rode away.