صفحة 188 من 490

He shrugged his shoulders. "You are ill, I suppose. When you are

ill you shouldn't act. You make yourself ridiculous. My friends

were bored. I was bored."

She seemed not to listen to him. She was transfigured with joy.

An ecstasy of happiness dominated her.

"Dorian, Dorian," she cried, "before I knew you, acting was the

one reality of my life. It was only in the theatre that I lived.

I thought that it was all true. I was Rosalind one night and

Portia the other. The joy of Beatrice was my joy, and the sorrows

of Cordelia were mine also. I believed in everything. The common

people who acted with me seemed to me to be godlike. The painted

scenes were my world. I knew nothing but shadows, and I thought

them real. You came-oh, my beautiful love!-and you freed my soul

from prison. You taught me what reality really is. To-night, for

the first time in my life, I saw through the hollowness, the

sham, the silliness of the empty pageant in which I had always

played. To-night, for the first time, I became conscious that the

Romeo was hideous, and old, and painted, that the moonlight in

the orchard was false, that the scenery was vulgar, and that the

words I had to speak were unreal, were not my words, were not

what I wanted to say.