It was opened sharply
by a lady's maid, who fell back respectfully before Mr. Brimmer's
all-correct presence.
Half reclining on a sofa in the parlor of an elaborate suite of
apartments was the woman whom Mr. Brimmer had a few hours before beheld
on the stage of the theatre. Lifting her eyes languidly from a book that
lay ostentatiously on her lap, she beckoned her visitor to approach.
She was a woman still young, whose statuesque beauty had but slightly
suffered from cosmetics, late hours, and the habitual indulgence of
certain hysterical emotions that were not only inconsistent with the
classical suggestions of her figure, but had left traces not unlike the
grosser excitement of alcoholic stimulation. She looked like a tinted
statue whose slight mutations through stress of time and weather had
been unwisely repaired by freshness of color.
"I am such a creature of nerves," she said, raising a superb neck and
extending a goddess-like arm, "that I am always perfectly exhausted
after the performance. I fly, as you see, to my first love--poetry--as
soon as Rosina has changed my dress. It is not generally known--but
I don't mind telling YOU--that I often nerve myself for the effort of
acting by reading some well-remembered passage from my favorite poets,
as I stand by the wings.
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