Addie turns to her husband with dewy eyes, and lays her hand timidly on his breast, echoing the last eager words--"'Dost thou like the picture?'"--in a soft whisper.
"I don't know--I did not listen," he answers dreamily. "I never could thrill to Melnotte's lyre. It is too measured, too smooth, too flowery to breathe the fire of earth-born passion."
"Then you do not believe in the eloquence of love?"
"No. I believe that the voice of love--the love man feels but once in a life--finds no polished utterance. It is most times dumb, strangled by the impotence, the poverty of words, or else finds vent in harsh, uncouth, halting measure. It never pleads in flowing rhythm; if it could, more lovers would be successful. You could be won, Addie, by honeyed words. I read it in your face as you sat listening."
"You gave me no honeyed words, no measured music, and yet--and yet--" Her whisper is drowned by Pauline's "stagey" metallic voice--
"'Oh, as the bee upon the flower I hang Upon the honey of thy eloquent tongue! Am I not blest? And, if I love too wildly, Who would not love thee like Pauline?'
"There--that will do for to-day, Melnotte. Go back to your spade and wheelbarrow. We know our parts to perfection. I'm sick of rehearsing."
"That last scene, Pauline--we're not up in it yet--"
"Pauline! Mr. Everard, what do you mean?"
"I mean Pauline Deschappelles, of course."
"I see, I see. The last scene? Oh, I'm up in it thoroughly; and, besides, I have not time now! I must write a line to Florrie before post-time."
She turns away lightly, and Everard's eyes, following her despondently, rest on the husband and wife sitting side by side.
"I did not know you were there," he says, strolling moodily toward them. "What did you think of it?"
"We thought it capital," answers Armstrong encouragingly. "That last bit was most touchingly delivered--quite up to Barry Sullivan."
"Oh, I feel I shall do my part right enough; but your sister, Mrs. Armstrong, is not up to the mark! Don't you feel it--eh? She's very well--perfection, in fact--in the light, frivolous parts; but where the ring of passion comes in she is hard, stagey, unfeeling. She is not Bulwer's Pauline, she's herself--Pauline Lefroy--and no coaching, no training, will make her anything else."