At best such a change of masks was but a clumsy and inadequate evasion of the difficulty; yet even this was out of the question whenever the catastrophe befell the character while on the scene. In these cases the dramatists sometimes try to explain the immobility of the actor’s mask. An unusually successful instance occurs in Sophocles’ _Electra_. Electra had believed her brother dead, and now she unexpectedly holds him in her arms, alive and well. But not a spark of joy can scintillate across her wooden features either then or later. Her subsequent passivity is motivated by Orestes’ request that she continue her lamentations and not allow their mother to read her secret in her radiant face (vss. 1296 ff.). Electra replies that ‘old hatred of her mother is too ingrained to allow her countenance to be seen wreathed in smiles, but that her tears will be tears of joy,’ which has the merit of explaining also the present unresponsiveness of her features. Sometimes the actor’s face is hidden at times when strong emotions might be expected to play thereon. For example, in Euripides’ _Orestes_, Electra and the chorus stand in the orchestra and look toward the palace within which Helen is being slain and from which her dying cries issue. Inasmuch as their backs are turned to the audience, the spectators are free to suppose that their faces are working with excitement and horror. This fiction will be destroyed as soon as the performers wheel around toward the front again. Accordingly Electra is made to say: Belovèd dames, into the jaws of death Hermione cometh! Let our outcry cease: For into the net’s meshes, lo, she falls. Fair quarry this shall be, so she be trapped. Back to your stations step with quiet look, With hue that gives no token of deeds done: And I will wear a trouble-clouded eye, As who of deeds accomplished knoweth nought. [Vss. 1313 ff.; Way’s translation] Electra’s “trouble-clouded eye” does not refer to sorrow at Helen’s death but at her brother’s evil plight, and has characterized her mask from the beginning of the play.