The gay flood of the streets, the social excitements and embarrassments of the evening were a conflagration; circling about the clear bright kernel of moving lights and figures on the stage. She gazed at the bright stage. Moments came sharply up, grouped figures, spoken words. She held them, her contemplation aglow with the certainty that something was there that set her alight with love, making her whole in the midst of her uncertainty and ignorance. Words and phrases came, a sentence here and there that had suddenly shaped and deepened a scene. Perhaps it was only in seeing Shakespeare acted that one could appreciate him? But it was _not_ the acting. No one could act. They all just missed it. It was all very well for Mag to laugh. They _did_ just miss it.... "Why, my child? In what way?" "They act at the audience, they take their cues too quickly and have their emotions too abruptly; and from outside not inside." "But if they felt at all, all the time, they would go mad or die." "No, they would not. But even if they did not feel it, if they looked, it would be enough. They don't _look_ at the thing they are doing." It was not the acting. Nor the play. The characters of the story were always tiresome. The ideas, the wonderful quotations if you looked closely at them were everyone's ideas; things that everybody knew. To read Shakespeare carefully all through would only be to find all the general things somewhere or other. But that did not matter. Being ignorant of him and of history did not matter, as long as you heard him. Poetry! The poetry of Shakespeare...? Primers of literature told one that. It did not explain the charm. Just the sound. Music. Like Beethoven. Bad acting cannot spoil Shakespeare. Bad playing cannot destroy Beethoven. It was the _sound_ of Shakespeare that made the scenes real--that made Winter's Tale, so long ago and so bewildering, remain in beauty.... "Dear Eve, Shakespeare is a sound ..." She tore up the letter. The next time she wrote to Eve she must remember to say that. The garret was stifling. Away from the brilliant window the room was just as hot; the close thick smell of dust sickened her. She came back to the table, sitting as near as possible to the open. The afternoon had been wasted trying to express her evening and nothing had been expressed. The thought of last night was painful now. She had spoiled it in some way. Her heart beat heavily in the stifling room. Her head ached and her eyes were tired. She was too tired to walk; and there was no money; barely enough for next week's A.B.C. suppers. There was no comfort. It was May ... in a stuffy dusty room. May. Her face quivered and her head sank upon the hot table. CHAPTER XV 1