And he, too, had clapped fervently, and had
muttered "Bravo!" This special doll was a marvel of touching and
persuasive grace, with a voice--when Edward Henry could hear it--that
melted the spine. This special doll had every elegance and seemed to
be in the highest pride of youth.
At the close of the affair, as this special doll sank into the embrace
of a male doll from whom she had been unjustly separated, and then
straightened herself, deliciously and confidently smiling, to take the
tremendous applause of Edward Henry and the rest, Edward Henry thought
that he had never assisted at a triumph so genuine and so inspiring.
Oblivious of the pain in his neck, and of the choking, foul atmosphere
of the enclosure, accurately described as the Pit, he had gone forth
into the street with a subconscious notion in his head that the
special doll was more than human, was half divine. And he had said
afterwards, with immense satisfaction, at Bursley: "Yes, I saw Rose
Euclid in 'Flower of the Heart.'"
He had never set eyes on her since.
And now, on this day at Wilkins's, he had seen in the restaurant, and
he saw again before him in his private parlour, a faded and stoutish
woman, negligently if expensively dressed, with a fatigued, nervous,
watery glance, an unnatural, pale-violet complexion, a wrinkled skin
and dyed hair; a woman of whom it might be said that she had escaped
grandmotherhood, if indeed she had escaped it, by mere luck--and he
was point-blank commanded to believe that she and Rose Euclid were the
same person.
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