privation is a great one. She could dress herself as gorgeously as she
pleased, but there was no one to envy her splendour, nor even to admire
it. For years she had played to an empty house. If, by any fantastic
combination of events, it were possible that a fairly good actress
should ever be obliged to play the same part every night for five and
twenty years in an absolutely empty theatre, and if she did not go mad
under the ordeal, she would perhaps turn out very like the Lady of
Greifenstein. The stage was always set; the scenery was always of the
best and newest; the vacant boxes and the yawning pit were brilliantly
lighted; the costumes were by the best makers; the stage manager was
punctual and in his place; the curtain went up every day for the
performance; but Frau von Greifenstein's theatre was silent and
untenanted, not a voice broke the stillness, not a rustle of garments
or a flutter of a programme in a spectator's hand made the silence less
intense, not an echo of applause woke a thrill of pride or vanity in
the heart of the solitary performer. And the poor actress was growing
old, wasting her smiles, and her poses, and her bursts of laughter, and
her sudden entries on the empty air, till by mechanical repetition they
had grown so meaningless as to be almost terrifying and more than
grotesque.

It was no wonder that she seemed so very silly. Incapable of finding
any serious resource in her intellect, she had devoted her energies to
outward things in a place where there was no one to applaud her efforts
or flatter her vanity. Many women would have given it up and would have
fallen into a state of listless indifference; some would have become
insane. But with Frau von Greifenstein the desire to please by
appearance and manner had outlasted any natural gift for pleasing which
she might once have possessed, and had withstood the test of solitude
and the damping atmosphere created by a total absence of appreciation.