At last she shut the book sharply, lay back, and drew a deep breath, expressive of the wonder which always marks the transition from the imaginary world to the real world.
"What I want to know," she said aloud, "is this: What is the truth?
What's the truth of it all ?" She was speaking partly as herself, and partly as the heroine of the play she had just read.

The landscape outside, because she had seen nothing but print for the space of two hours, now appeared amazingly solid and clear, but although there were men on the hill washing the trunks of olive trees with a white liquid, for the moment she herself was the most vivid thing in it--an heroic statue in the middle of the foreground, dominating the view.

Ibsen's plays always left her in that condition.

She acted them for days at a time, greatly to Helen's amusement; and then it would be Meredith's turn and she became Diana of the Crossways.

But Helen was aware that it was not all acting, and that some sort of change was taking place in the human being.