Once their eyes met by merest accident; but hers apparently saw nothing, and Winston returned to his disagreeable labors at the Opera House, nursing a feeling akin to disappointment.
Concealed within the gloomy shadows of the wings, he stood entranced that night watching her depict the character of a wife whose previous happy life had been irretrievably ruined by deceit; and the force, the quiet originality of her depiction, together with its marvellous clearness of detail and its intense realism, held him captive.

The plot of the play was ugly, melodramatic, and entirely untrue to nature; against it Winston's cultivated taste instantly revolted; yet this woman interpreted her own part with the rare instinct of a true artist, picturing to the very life the particular character intrusted to her, and holding the house to a breathless realization of what real artistic portrayal meant.

In voice, manner, action, in each minute detail of face and figure, she was truly the very woman she represented.

It was an art so fine as to make the auditors forget the artist, forget even themselves.

Her perfect workmanship, clear-cut, rounded, complete, stood forth like a delicate cameo beside the rude buffoonery of T.
Macready Lane, the coarse villany of Albrecht, and the stiff mannerisms of the remainder of the cast.