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Updated: June 2, 2025
It was The Tempest, and he hardly understood. It broke over him in overpowering sound and colour. He was dazed and blinded. He forgot Francey. He sat with his gaunt white face between his bands and watched them pass: Prospero, Miranda, Ferdinand, Ariel figures of a noble, glittering company and wretched, uncouth Caliban crouched on the outskirts of their lives, pining for his lost kingdom.
But he could always see the room and Francey working there, and the slender, joyful body of the faun poised on the verge of its mystic dance. Once, Francey was too strong for him, and they bought tickets for the theatre, and he sat hunched beside her in the front row of the cheap seats and stared down at the great square of light like an outcast gazing at the golden gates of Paradise.
And, bearing these insignia of vulgarity, he looked more than ever pathetic and over-delicate. Cosgrave was an idiot who had lost his balance. But Francey was another matter. The Francey who had asked "And are you a good little boy?" accepted Connie Edwards without question. Because it was ridiculous to be hurt about it Robert grew angry with her and frowned away from her, and talked to Mr.
"You're wanted. There's a party of ten just come in. Hurry up, can't yer?" Robert put down his plates and went into the dining-room with the wine list. His table-napkin he carried neatly folded over one arm. And there was Francey Wilmot. She had other people with her, but he saw her first. He could not have mistaken her. Of course, she had changed.
The girl in the billycock hat blew a great puff of smoke towards him. "Oh, death and damnation, Howard! Haven't I been explaining to you all the afternoon that I owe rent for a fortnight to a devil in female form, and that unless someone buys 'A Sunset over the Surrey Cliffs seen Upside Down, Gerty will be on the streets? Make it beer with a dash o' bitters." Finally it was Francey who decided.
But he knew that Francey heard him. He meant her to hear. "It's crazy. They ought to be glad to let a woman like that slip out. If she lives she'll only infect more people with her rottenness. She's better dead. Instead of that they'll suck out somebody else's vitality to save her. The better the life the more pleased they'll be to risk it.
Robert could see Christine and Francey just ahead of him. Christine had taken Francey's arm, and they talked together in undertones like people who have secret things to say to one another. How small Christine was! She seemed to have shrunk into a handful of a woman as though the sun had withered her. She walked timidly, with bowed head, feeling her way.
He could only stare at her, frowning in his distress, and she asked: "You do know who I am, don't you?" "Yes. Francey Francey Wilmot Miss Wilmot." He forced himself to stop stammering, and added stiffly: "I did not know you had recognized me." "Didn't you? I thought Well, I did recognize you anyhow. I was so astonished at first that I thought it was a sort of materialization.
"I was frightened, Francey and jealous of everything of the things you love that I don't even know of of the places you've been to of your friends your money your work. I thought you'd run away to Italy or somewhere else where I couldn't follow that I'd lost you " He saw her face and how deeply stirred she was.
Was it his youth, or had Francey, dancing before him, her head lifted to catch unearthly harmonies, thrown a spell over his judgment? She had gone, and he was older but he had a feeling that the disillusionment was not only in himself. It was in the atmosphere about him in the stale air, stamped on the stereotyped gilt and plush of the shabby theatre and on the faces of the people.
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