PAULA SEES SELMA CROSS IN TRAGEDY, AND IN HER OWN APARTMENT NEXT MORNING
IS GIVEN A REALITY TO PLAY
Selma Cross did not reach New York until the morning of the opening day
at the _Herriot Theatre_. She was very tired from rehearsals and the
try-outs along the string of second cities. There had been a big
difference of opinion regarding _The Thing_, among what New Yorkers are
pleased to call the provincial critics. From the character of the first
notices, on the contrary, it was apparent that the townsmen were not a
little afraid to trust such a startling play to New York. Mid-forenoon
of an early April day, the actress rapped upon Paula's door.
"I have seen the boards," Paula exclaimed. "'Selma Cross' in letters big
as you are; and yesterday afternoon they were hanging the electric sign
in front of the _Herriot_. Also I shall be there to-night--since I was
wise enough to secure a ticket ten days ago. Isn't it glorious?"
"Yes, I am quite happy about it," Selma Cross said, stretching out upon
the lounge. "Of course, it's not over until we see the morning papers. I
was never afraid--even of the vitriol-throwers, before. You see, I have
to think about success for Stephen Cabot, too."
"Is he well?" Paula asked hastily.
"Oh yes, though I think sometimes he's a martyr. Oh, I have so much to
say----"
"You said you would tell me some time how Vhruebert first decided to
take you on," Paula urged.
"Before I got to the gate where the star-stuff passes through?" Selma
Cross answered laughingly. "That was four years ago. I had been to him
many times before he let me in. His chair squeaked under him. He looked
at me first as if he were afraid I would spring at him. I told him what
I could do, and he kept repeating that he didn't know it and New York
didn't know it. I said I would show New York, but unfortunately I had to
show him first. He screwed up his face and stared at me, as if I were
startlingly original in my ugliness. I know he could hear my heart beat.
"'I can't do anything for you, Miss Gross,' he said impatiently, but in
spite of himself, he added, 'Come to-morrow.' You see, I had made him
think, and that hurt. He knew something of my work all right, and
wondered where he would put a big-mouthed, clear-skinned, yellow-eyed
amazon. The next day, he kept me waiting in the reception-room until I
could have screamed at the half-dressed women on the walls.
"'I don't know exactly why I asked you to come again,' was his greeting
when the door finally opened to me. 'What was it, once more, that you
mean to do?'
"'I mean to be the foremost tragedienne,' I said.
"'Sit down. Tragedy doesn't bay.'
"'I shall make it pay.'
"'Um-m. How do you know? Some brivate vire of yours?'
"'I can show you that I shall make it pay.'
"'My Gott, not here! We will go to the outskirts.'
"And he meant it, Paula. It was mid-winter. He took me to a little
summer-theatre up Lenox way. The place had not been open since
Thanksgiving. Vhruebert sat down in the centre of the frosty parquet,
shivering in his great coat. You know he's a thin-lipped, smile-less
little man, but not such a dead soul as he looks. He leaks out
occasionally through the dollar-varnish. Can you imagine a colder
reception? Vhruebert sat there blowing out his breath repeatedly,
seemingly absorbed in the effect the steam made in a little bar of
sunlight which slanted across the icy theatre. That was my try-out
before Vhruebert. I gave him some of Sudermann, Boker, and Ibsen. He
raised his hand finally, and when I halted, he called in a bartender
from the establishment adjoining, and commanded me to give something
from Camille and Sapho. I would have murdered him if he had been fooling
me after that. The bartender shivered in the cold.
"'What do you think of that, Mr. Vite-Apron?' Vhruebert inquired at
length. He seemed to be warmer.
"'Hot stuff,' said the man. 'It makes your coppers sizzle.'
"The criticism delighted Vhruebert. 'Miss Gross, you make our goppers
sizzle,' he exclaimed, and then ordered wine and told me to be at his
studio to-morrow at eleven. That was the real winning," Selma Cross
concluded. "To-night I put the crown on it."
Paula invariably felt the fling of emotions when Selma Cross was near.
The latter seemed now to have found her perfect dream; certainly there
was fresh coloring and poise in her words and actions. It was
inspiriting for Paula to think of Selma Cross and Stephen Cabot having
been accepted by the hard-headed Vhruebert--that such a pair could eat
his bread and drink his wine with merry hearts. It was more than
inspiriting for her to think of this vibrant heart covering and
mothering the physically unfortunate. Paula asked, as only a woman
could, the question uppermost in both minds.
"Love me?" Selma whispered. "I don't know, dear. I know we love to be
together. I know that I love him. I know that he would not ask me to
take for a husband--a broken vessel----"
"But you can make him know that--to you--he is not a broken vessel!...
Oh, that would mean so little to me!"
"Yes, but I should have to tell him--of old Villiers--and the other!...
Oh, God, he is white fire! He is not the kind who could understand
that!... I thought I could do anything, I said, 'I am case-hardened.
Nothing can make me suffer!... I will go my way,--and no man, no power,
earthly or occult, can make me alter that way,' but Stephen Cabot has
done it. I would rather win for him to-night, than be called the
foremost living tragedienne.... I think he loves me, but there is the
price I paid--and I didn't need to pay it, for I had already risen out
of the depths. That was vanity. I needed no angel. I didn't care until I
met Stephen Cabot!"
"I think--I think, if I were Stephen Cabot, I could forgive that," Paula
said slowly. She wondered at herself for these words when she was alone,
and the little place of books was no longer energized by the other's
presence.
Selma started up from the lounge, stretched her great arm half across
the room and clutched Paula's hand. There was a soft grateful glow in
the big yellow eyes. "Do you know that means something--from a woman
like you? Always I shall remember that--as a fine thing from my one fine
woman. Mostly, they have hated me--what you call--our sisters."
"You are a different woman--you're all brightened, since you met Stephen
Cabot. I feel this," Paula declared.
"Even if all smoothed out here, there is still the old covenant in
Kentucky," Selma said, after a moment, and sprang to her feet, shaking
herself full-length.
"Won't you tell me about that, too?"
"Yes, but not now. I must go down-town. There is a dress-maker--and _we_
breakfast together.... Root for me--for us, to-night--won't you, dear
girl?"
"With all my heart."
They passed out through the hall together--just as the elevator-man
tucked a letter under the door.... Alone, Paula read this Spring
greeting from Quentin Charter:
I look away this morning into the brilliant East. I think of
you there--as glory waits. I feel the strength of a giant to
battle through dragons of flesh and cataclysms of Nature....
Who knows what conflicts, what conflagrations, rage in the
glowing distance--between you and me? Not I, but that I have
strength--I do know.... By the golden glory of this wondrous
Spring morning which spreads before my eyes a world of work and
heroism blessed of the Most High God, I only ask to know that
you are there--_that you are there_.... While eternity is yet
young, we shall emerge out of time and distance; though it be
from a world altered by great cosmic shattering--yet shall we
emerge, serene man and woman.
You are there in the brilliant East. In good time I shall go to
you. Meanwhile I have your light and your song. The dull dim
brute is gone from me, forever. Even that black prince of the
blood, Passion, stands beyond the magnetic circle. With you
_there_, I feel a divine right kingship, and all the black
princes of the body are afar off, herding with the beasts. I
tell you, since I have heard the Skylark sing--there is no
death.
That day became a vivid memory. Charter reached the highest pinnacle of
her mind--a man who could love and who could wait. The message from the
West exalted her. Here, indeed, was one of the New Voices. All through
the afternoon, out of the hushes of her mind, would rise this paean from
the West--sentence after sentence _for her_.... No, not for her alone.
She saw him always in the midst of his people, illustrious among his
people.... She saw him coming to her over mountains--again and again,
she caught a glimpse of him, configured among the peaks, and striding
toward her--yet between them was a valley torn with storm.... It came to
her that there must be a prophecy in this message; that he would not be
suffered to come to her easily as his letters came. Yet, the strength he
had felt was hers, and those were hours of ecstasy--while the gray of
the Spring afternoon thickened into dark. Only _The Thing_ could have
called her out that night; for once, when it was almost time to go, the
storm lifted from the valley between them. She saw his path to her, just
for an instant, and she longed to see it again....
Paula entered the theatre a moment before the curtain rose, but in the
remaining seconds of light, discovered in the fourth aisle far to the
right--"the finest, lowest head" and the long white face of Stephen
Cabot. If a man's face may be called beautiful, his was--firm, delicate,
poetic,--brilliant eyes, livid pallor. And the hand in which the thin
cheek rested, while large and chalky-white, was slender as a girl's....
In the middle of the first act, a tall, elderly man shuffled down the
aisle and sank into the chair in front of Paula, where he sprawled,
preparing to be bored. This was Felix Larch, one of the best known of
the metropolitan critics, notorious as a play-killer.
The first-night crowd can be counted on. It meant nothing to Vhruebert
that the house was packed. The venture was his up to the rise of the
curtain. Paula was absorbed by the first two acts of the play, but did
not feel herself fit to judge. She was too intensely interested in the
career of Selma Cross; in the face of Stephen Cabot; in the attitudes of
Felix Larch, who occasionally forgot to pose. It was all very big and
intimate, but the bigger drama, up to the final curtain, was the battle
for success against the blase aspirations of the audience and the
ultra-critical enemy personified in the man before her.
The small and excellent company was balanced to a crumb. Adequate
rehearsals had finished the work. Then the lines were rich, forceful and
flowing--strange with a poetic quality that "got across the footlights."
Paula noted these exterior matters with relief. Unquestionably the
audience forgot itself throughout the second act. Paula realized, with
distaste, that her own critical sense was bristling for trouble. She had
hoped to be as receptive to emotional enjoyment as she imagined the
average play-goer to be. Though she failed signally in this, her
sensibilities were in no way outraged, nor even irritated. On the
contrary, she began to rise to the valor of the work and its
performance. The acting of Selma Cross, though supreme in repression,
was haunting, unforgettable. Felix Larch had twice disturbed her by
taking his seat in the midst of the first and second acts. She had heard
that he rarely sat out a whole performance, and took it therefore as a
good omen when he returned, in quite a gentlemanly fashion, as the final
curtain rose.
By some new mastery of style, Selma Cross had managed, almost
throughout, to keep her profile to the audience. The last act was half
gone, moreover, before the people realized that there were qualities in
her voice, other than richness and flexibility. She had held them thus
far with the theme, charging the massed consciousness of her audience
with subtle passions. Now came the rising moments. Full into the light
she turned her face.... She was quite alone with her tragedy. A gesture
of the great bare arm, as the stage darkened, and she turned loose upon
the men and women a perfect havoc of emptiness--in the shadows of which
was manifesting a huge unfinished human. She made the people see how a
mighty passion, suddenly bereft of its object, turns to devour the brain
that held it. They saw the great, gray face of _The Thing_ slowly rubbed
out--saw the mind behind it, soften and run away into chaos. There was a
whisper, horrible with exhaustion--a breast beaten in the gloom.
Felix Larch swore softly.... _The Thing_ was laughing as the curtain
crawled down over her--an easy, wind-blown, chattering laugh....
The critic grasped the low shoulders of a bald, thin-lipped
acquaintance, exclaiming:
"Where did you get that diadem, Lucky One?"
Paula heard a hoarse voice, but the words of the reply were lost.
"Come over across the street for a minute. I want a stimulant and a talk
with you," Felix Larch added, wriggling into his overcoat.
There was a low, husky laugh, and then plainly these words: "She makes
your goppers sizzle--eh?... Wait until I tell her she has won and I'll
go with you," added the queer little man, whom Paula knew now to be
Vhruebert....
The latter passed along the emptied aisle toward Stephen Cabot, who had
not left his seat. Paula noted with a start that the playwright's head
had dropped forward in a queer way. Vhruebert glanced at him, and
grasped his shoulder. The old manager then cleared his throat--a sound
which apparently had meaning for the nearest usher, who hurried forward
to be dispatched for a doctor. It was very cleverly and quietly done....
Stephen Cabot, who could see more deeply than others into the art of the
woman and the power of his own lines, and possibly deeper into the big
result of this fine union of play and player--had fainted at the
climacteric moment.... A physician now breasted his way through the
crowd at the doors, and _The Thing_ suddenly appeared in the nearest box
and darted forward like a rush of wind. She gathered the insensible one
in her arms and repeated his name low and swiftly.
"Yes," he murmured, opening his eyes at last.
They seemed alone.... Presently Stephen Cabot laughingly protested that
he was quite well, and disappeared behind the scenes, assisted by the
long, bare arm that had so recently hurled havoc over the throng. Paula
waited for a few moments at the door until she was assured.
Driving home through the Park, she felt that she could not endure
another emotion. For a long time she tossed restlessly in bed, too tired
to sleep. A reacting depression had fallen upon her worn nerves. She
could not forget the big structure of the day's joy, but substance had
dropped from it.... The cold air sweeping through her sleeping-room
seemed to come from desolate mountains. Lost entirely was her gladness
of victory in the Selma Cross achievement. She called herself spiteful,
ungrateful, and quite miserably at last sank into sleep....
She was conscious at length of the gray of morning, a stifling pressure
in her lungs, and the effort to rouse herself. She felt the cold upon
her face; yet the air seemed devitalized by some exhausting voltage, she
had known before. There was a horrid jangle in her brain, as of two
great forces battling to complete the circuit there. A face imploring
from a garret-window, a youth in a lion's skin, a rock in the desert and
a rock in the Park, the dim hotel parlor and the figure of yesterday
among the mountain-peaks--so the images rushed past--until the tortured
face of Bellingham (burning eyes in the midst of ghastly pallor), caught
and held her mind still. From a room small as her own, and gray like her
own with morning, he called to her: "Come to me.... Come to me, Paula
Linster.... I have lived for you--oh, come to me!"
She sprang out of bed, and knelt. How long it was before she freed
herself, Paula never knew. Indeed, she was not conscious of being
actually awake, until she felt the bitter cold and hurried into the
heated room beyond. She was physically wretched, but no longer
obsessed.... She would not believe now that the beyond-devil had called
again. It was all a dream, she told herself again and again--this rush
of images and the summons from the enemy. Yesterday, she had been too
happy; human bodies cannot endure so long such refining fire; to-day was
the reaction and to-morrow her old strength and poise would come again.
Quite bravely, she assured herself that she was glad to pay the price
for the hours of yesterday. She called for the full series of morning
papers, resolving to occupy her mind with the critical notices of the
new play.
These were quite remarkable in the unanimity of their praise. The
Cross-Cabot combination had won, indeed, but Paula could extract no
buoyancy from the fact, nor did black coffee dispel the vague
premonitive shadows which thickened in the background of her mind. The
rapping of Selma Cross upon her door was hours earlier than ever before.
She, too, had called for the morning papers. A first night is never
finished until these are out. Paula did not feel equal to expressing all
that the play had meant to her. It was with decided disinclination that
she admitted her neighbor.
Selma Cross had not bathed, nor dressed her hair. She darted in
noiselessly in furry slippers--a yellow silk robe over her night-dress.
Very silken and sensuous, the huge, laughing creature appeared as she
sank upon the lounge and shaded her yellow eyes from the light. So
perfect was her health, and so fresh her happiness, that an hour or two
of sleep had not left her eyes heavy nor her skin pallid. There was an
odor of sweet clover about her silks that Paula never sensed afterward
without becoming violently ill. She knew she was wrong--that every fault
was hers--but she could not bear the way her neighbor cuddled this
morning in the fur of the couch-covering. Selma had brought in every
morning newspaper issued and a thick bundle of telegrams besides. Paula
told her, literally forcing the sentences, how splendidly the play and
her own work had appealed to her. This task, which would have been a
pure delight at another time, was adequately accomplished only after
much effort now. It appeared that the actress scarcely heard what she
was saying. The room was brightening and there was a grateful piping of
steam in the heaters of the apartment.
"So glad you liked it, dear," Selma said briefly. "And isn't it great
the way the papers treated it? Not one of them panned the play nor my
work.... I say, it's queer when a thing you've dreamed of for years
comes true at last--it's different from the way you've seen it come to
others. I mean there's something unique and a fullness you never
imagined. Oh, I don't know nor care what I'm drowning to say.... Please
do look over these telegrams--_from everybody_! There's over a hundred!
I had to come in here. I'd have roused you out of bed--if you hadn't
been up. The telephone will be seething a little later--and I wanted
this talk with you."
Big theatrical names were attached to the yellow messages. It is a
custom for stages-folk to speed a new star through the first performance
with a line of courage--wired. You are supposed to count your real
friends in those who remember the formality. It is not well to be a day
late....
"And did you notice how Felix Larch uncoiled?"
Paula looked up from the telegrams to explain how this critic had been
the object of her contemplation the night before.
"He hasn't turned loose in that sort of praise this season," Selma Cross
added. "His notice alone, dear, is enough to keep us running at the
_Herriot_ until June--and we'll open there again in the fall, past
doubt."
Paula felt wicked in that she must enthuse artificially. She forced
herself to remember that ordinarily she could have sprung with a merry
heart into the very centre of the other's happiness.
"Listen, love," Selma resumed, ecstactically hugging her pillow, "I want
to tell you things. I wanted to yesterday, but I had to hurry off.
You've got so much, that you must have the rest. Besides, it's in my
mind this morning, because it was the beginning of last night----"
"Yes, tell me," Paula said faintly, bringing her a cup of coffee.
"I was first smitten with the passion to act--a gawky girl of ten at a
child's party," Selma began. "I was speaking a piece when the impulse
came to turn loose. It may have been because I was so homely and
straight-haired, or it may have been that I did the verses so
differently from the ordinary routine of speaking pieces--anyway, a boy
in the room laughed. Another boy immediately bored in upon the scoffer,
downed his enemy and was endeavoring hopefully to kill him with bare
hands, when I interfered. My champion and I walked home together and
left a wailing and disordered company. That's the first brush.
"My home was Danube, Kentucky. They had a dramatic society there. Eight
years after the child's party, this dramatic society gave _A Tribute to
Art_. Where the piece came from is forgotten. How it got its name never
was known outside of the sorry brain that thrust it, deformed but
palpitating, upon the world. Mrs. Fiske couldn't have made other than a
stick of the heroine. The hero was larger timber, though too dead for
vine leaves. But, I think I told you about the Big Sister--put there in
blindness or by budding genius. There were possibilities in that
character. Danube didn't know it, or it wouldn't have fallen to me.
Indeed, I remember toward the end of the piece--a real moment of windy
gloom and falling leaves, a black-windowed farmhouse on the left, the
rest a desolate horizon--in such a moment the Big Sister plucks out her
heart to show its running death.
"I had persisted in dramatic work, in and out of season, during those
eight years, but it really was because the Big Sister didn't need to be
beautiful that I got the part. I wove the lines tighter and sharpened
the thing in rehearsals, until the rest of the cast became afraid, not
that I would outshine them, but that I might disgrace the society on the
night o' nights. You see, I was only just tolerated. Poor father, he
wasn't accounted much in Danube, and there was a raft of us. Poor, dear
man!
"Danube wasn't big enough to attract real shows, so the visiting drama
gave expression to limited trains, trap-doors, blank cartridges and
falling cliffs"--Selma Cross chuckled expansively at the memory--"and I
plunged my fellow-townsmen into waters deeper and stormier than
_Nobody's Claim_ or _Shadows of a Great City_. Wasn't it monstrous?"
Paula inclined her head, but was not given time to answer.
"A spring night in Kentucky--hot, damp, starlit--shall I ever forget
that terrible night of _A Tribute to Art_? All Danube somebodies were
out to see the younger generation perpetuate the lofty culture of the
place. Grandmothers were there, who played _East Lynne_ on the same
stage--before the raids of Wolfert and Morgan; and daddies who sat like
deans, eyes dim, but artistic, you know--watched the young idea progress
upon familiar paths.... The heroine did the best she could. I was a
camel beside her--strode about her raging and caressing. You see how I
could have spoiled _The Thing_ last night--if I had let the passion
flood through me like a torrent through a broken dam? That's what I did
in Danube--and some full-throated baying as well. Oh, it is horrible to
remember.
"The town felt itself brutalized, and justly. I had left a rampant thing
upon every brain, and very naturally the impulse followed to squelch the
perpetrator for all time. I don't blame Danube now. I had been bad; my
lack of self-repression, scandalous. The part, as I had evolved it, was
out of all proportion to the piece, to Danube, to amateur theatricals. I
don't know if I struck a false note, but certainly I piled on the
feeling.
"Can you imagine, Paula, that it was an instant of singular glory to
me--that climax?... Poor Danube couldn't see that I was combustible
fuel, freshly lit; that I was bound to burn with a steady flame when the
pockets of gas were exploded.... My dazed people did not leave the hall
at once. It was as if they had taken strong medicine and wanted to study
the effect upon each other. I came out from behind at last, up the
aisle, sensing disorder where I had expected praise, and was joined by
my old champion, Calhoun Knox, who had whipped the scoffer at the
child's party. He pressed my hand. We had always been friends. Passing
around the edge of the crowd, I heard this sentence:
"'Some one--the police, if necessary--must prevent Selma Cross from
making another such shocking display of herself!'
"It was a woman who spoke, and the man at her side laughed. I had no
time nor thought to check Calhoun. He stepped up to the man beside the
woman. 'Laugh like that again,' he said coldly, 'and I'll kill you!'
"It seemed to me that all Danube turned upon us. My face must have been
mist-gray. I know I felt like falling. The woman's words had knifed me.
"'_Oh, you cat-minds!_' I flung at them. Calhoun Knox drew me out into
the dark. I don't know how far out on the Lone Ridge Pike we walked,
before it occurred to either of us to halt or speak," Selma Cross went
on very slowly. "I think we walked nearly to the Knobs. The night had
cleared. It was wonderfully still out there among the hemp-fields. I
knew how he was pitying me, and told him I must go away.
"'I can't stand for you to go away, Selma,' Calhoun said. 'I want you to
stay and be mine always. We always got along together. You are beautiful
enough to me!'
"I guess it was hard for him to say it," the woman finished with a
laugh, "I used to wish he hadn't put in that 'enough.' But that
moment--it was what I needed. There was always something big and simple
about Calhoun Knox. My hand darted to his shoulder and closed there like
a mountaineer's, 'You deserve more of a woman than I am, Calhoun,' I
said impetuously, 'but you can have me when I come to marry--but, God,
that's far off. I like you, Calhoun. I'd fight for you to the death--as
you fought for me to-night and long ago. I think I'd hate any woman who
got you--but there's no wife in me to-night. I have failed to win
Danube, Kentucky, but I'll win the world. I may be a burnt-out hag then,
but I'll come back--when I have won the world--and you can have me and
it.... Listen, Calhoun Knox, if ever a man means _husband_ to me--you
shall be the man, but to-night,' I ended with a flourish, and turned
back home, 'I'm not a woman--just a devil at war with the world!'"
"But haven't you heard from him?" Paula asked, after a moment.
"Yes, he wrote and wrote. Calhoun Knox is the kind of stuff that
remembers. The time came when I didn't have the heart to answer. I was
afraid I'd ask him for money, or ask him to come to help me. Help out of
Danube! I couldn't do that--better old Villiers.... But I mustn't lie to
you. I went through the really hard part alone.... So Calhoun's letters
were not answered, and maybe he has forgotten. Anyway, before I
marry--he shall have his chance. Oh, I'll make it hard for him. I
wouldn't open any letter from Danube now--but he shall have his
chance----"
"What do you mean to do?"
"Why, we'll finish the season here--and Vhruebert has promised us a
little run in the West during June. We touch Cincinnati. From there I'll
take the Company down to Danube. I've got to win the world and Danube.
After the play, I'll walk out on the Lone Ridge pike--among the
hemp-fields--with Calhoun Knox----"
"But he may have married----"
"God, how I hope so! I shall wish him kingly happiness--and rush back to
Stephen Cabot."
Paula could not be stirred by the story this morning. She missed, as
never before, some big reality behind the loves of Selma Cross. There
was too much of the sense of possession in her story--arm-possession. So
readily, could she be transformed into the earthy female, fighting tooth
and claw for her own. Paula could hardly comprehend in her present
depression, what she had said yesterday about Stephen Cabot's capacity
to forgive.... She was glad, when Selma Cross rose, yawned, stretched,
and shook herself. The odor of sweet clover was heaviness in the
room.... The long, bare arm darted over the reading-table and plucked
forth the book Paula loved. The volume had not been hidden; there was no
reason why she should not have done this, yet the action hurt the other
like a drenching of icy water upon her naked heart.
"Ho-ho--Quentin Charter! So _A Damsel Came to Peter_?"
"I think--I hear your telephone,--Selma!" Paula managed to say, her
voice dry, as if the words were cut from paper.
"Yes, yes, I must go, but here's another story. A rotten cad--but how he
can write! I don't mean books--but letters!... He's the one I told you
about--the Westerner--while the old man was in the South!"
The last was called from the hall. The heavy door slammed between them.
Paula could not stand--could not keep her mouth from dropping open. Her
temples seemed to be cracking apart.... She saw herself in
half-darkness--like _The Thing_ last night--beating her breast in the
gloom. She felt as if she must laugh--in that same wind-blown, chattering
way.