only an intense desire to prove his contentions. He nerved himself to
an unusual effort, but before he had played more than a few moments he
forgot the hostile husband and began to live the part of John Danton
as he had lived it in the writing, as he invariably lived it every
time he read the play or saw it acted.

Nor, as he had said, did he need prompting, for the lines were not the
written speeches of another which had been impressed upon his brain
by the mechanical process of repetition; they were his own thoughts
expressed in the simplest terms he knew, and they came forth unbidden,
hot, eager. Once he began to voice them he was seized by that same
mighty current which had drawn them from him in the first place and
left them strewn upon paper like driftwood after a flood. He had
acted every part of his play; he had spoken every line many times in
solitude; but this was the first time he had faced the real Diane. He
found himself mastered by a fierce exultation; he forgot that he
was acting or that the woman opposite him was playing a rôle of his
creation; he began to live his true life for the first time since he
had met the wife of Irving Francis. Clothed in the make-believe, the
real Henry Phillips spoke freely, feelingly. His very voice changed in
timbre, in quality; it became rich, alive; his eyes caressed the woman
and stirred her to a new response.

As for Irving Francis, he watched the transformation with
astonishment. Grudgingly, resentfully, he acknowledged that this was
indeed fine acting. He realized, too, that his blind egotism had
served merely to prove the truth of the author's criticism and
to emphasize his own shortcomings. The idea enraged him, but the
spectacle held him enthralled.