greatest miracle of the play--and to me it was altogether miraculous"--

"Oh, I'm glad to hear you say that!" cried the girl. "It was the greatest
experience of my life. I can't bear to have people undervalue it. I want
to hit them. But go on!"

Hewson went on as gravely as he could in view of her potential violence:
he pictured Miss Hernshaw beating down the inadequate witnesses of
"Ghosts" with her fan, which lay in her lap, with her cobwebby
handkerchief, drawn through its ring, and her long limp gloves looking
curiously like her pretty young arms in their slenderness. "I was merely
going to say that the most prodigious effect of the play was among the
actors--I won't venture on the spectators--"

"No, don't! It isn't speakable."

"It's astonishing the effect a play of Ibsen's has with the actors. They
can't play false. It turns the merest theatrical sticks into men and
women, and it does it through the perfect honesty of the dramatist. He
deals so squarely with himself that they have to deal squarely with
themselves. They have to be, and not just _seem_."

Miss Hernshaw sighed deeply. "I'm glad you think that," she said, and
Hewson felt very glad too that he thought that.

"Why?" he asked.

"Why? Because that is what I always want to do; and it's what I always
shall do, I don't care what they say."