I liked to
watch a play with Lena; everything was wonderful to her, and everything was
true. It was like going to revival meetings with someone who was always
being converted. She handed her feelings over to the actors with a kind of
fatalistic resignation. Accessories of costume and scene meant much more
to her than to me. She sat entranced through `Robin Hood' and hung upon
the lips of the contralto who sang, `Oh, Promise Me!'
Toward the end of April, the billboards, which I watched anxiously in those
days, bloomed out one morning with gleaming white posters on which two
names were impressively printed in blue Gothic letters: the name of an
actress of whom I had often heard, and the name `Camille.'
I called at the Raleigh Block for Lena on Saturday evening, and we walked
down to the theatre. The weather was warm and sultry and put us both in a
holiday humour. We arrived early, because Lena liked to watch the people
come in. There was a note on the programme, saying that the `incidental
music' would be from the opera `Traviata,' which was made from the same
story as the play. We had neither of us read the play, and we did not know
what it was about--though I seemed to remember having heard it was a piece
in which great actresses shone. `The Count of Monte Cristo,' which I had
seen James O'Neill play that winter, was by the only Alexandre Dumas I
knew.
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