Bilton raised his eyebrows. This was indeed a woman of 'infinite variety.' 'You cannot alter your play for fear she will be there,' he said. 'No; I suppose not. I say, what devils we are!' The play was an enormous success, and Mrs. Emsworth's personality seemed to lift it out of the regions of the equivocal. The part, that of a woman who represented the triumph of mind over morals, fitted her like a glove, and it was as impossible to be shocked as it is when a child uses a coarse or profane expression. Her impropriety was no more improper than is the natural instinct of a bird or animal improper; by a supreme effort of nature rather than art she seemed to roll up like an undecipherable manuscript the whole moral code, and say, 'Now, let's begin again.' Her gaiety covered her sins; more than that it transformed them into something so sunlit that the shadows vanished. Even as we laugh at Fricka when she inveighs against Siegmund and Sieglinde, feeling that condemnation is impossible, because praise or blame is uncalled for and irrelevant, so the ethical question (indeed, there was no question) of whether the person whom Mrs. Emsworth represented behaved quite 'like a lady 'never occurred to anyone. Her vitality dominated the situation. Of all her audience, there was none so utterly surprised at the performance as Bilton. He knew her fairly well, but he had never seen in her half so clearly the triumph of temperament. Knowing her as he did, he knew it was not art; it was only an effort, unique and unsurpassable, to be herself. Again and again he longed to be a play-wright; he could write her, he felt, could he write at all, a part that would be she. For never before had she so revealed herself a sunlit pagan. And as the play went on, his wonder increased. She was admirable. Then Mrs. Massington, who sat next him, laughed at something he had not seen, and for the moment he was vexed to have been called down from the stage to a woman less vivid, for his sensualism was of a rather high order.