Book Two Chapter 8 Kate's Interrogation

"How lucky! I wish I had been there."

"Well, that's as you look at it. When I realized what was going on I wanted to leave, and, I repeat, had the chief actress been an old hag or the usual sloven who plays this game, I would have fled; but she was as beautiful as a statue as she lay there, professedly in deep trance."

"You're sure it was Viola?"

"I wish there were a doubt! Yes, she was there, surrounded by a group of Pratt's friends, giving a performance." This word, too, expressed his contempt, his pain. "She went the whole length--lent herself to the cheapest kind of jugglery, playing with horrible adroitness upon the emotions of a lot of bereaved men and women. It was revolting, Kate. It shakes one's faith in humanity to see such a girl in such a position--and that nice-appearing old mother sat there serene as a tabby-cat while her daughter bamboozled a dozen open-faced ninnies."

"Tell me exactly what happened; I can't share your horror till I know what the girl actually did."

He approached the details with a grimace.

"First of all, imagine a little half-circle of well-dressed men and women, in a big drawing-room, enclosing a girl lying on a low chair under a single gas-jet, and a man standing beside her speechifying."

"That was Clarke, of course."

"Of course. Then imagine the light turned down, and the usual floating guitar--in the dark, of course--and rappings and whispers and the touch of hands--all in the dark. Then imagine--this will make you laugh--some kind of horn or megaphone of tin, that rambled around invisibly, distributing voices of loved ones here and there like sweetmeats out of a cornucopia--"