I don't know that anything very comic was happening on the stage, but I
was aware, with a kind of ironic subconsciousness, that some of the
superior spirits in their superior Heaven must be deriving a great deal
of fun from our situation. There was Vera thinking, I suppose, of
nothing but Lawrence, and Lawrence thinking of nothing but Vera, and
Nina thinking of nothing but Lawrence, and the audience thinking of
their safety, and the players thinking of their salaries, and
Protopopoff at home thinking of his victory, and the Czar in Tsarskoe
thinking of his Godsent autocracy, and Europe thinking of its ideals,
and Germany thinking of its militarism--all self-justified, all
mistaken, and all fulfilling some deeper plan at whose purpose they
could not begin to guess. And how intermingled we all were! Vera and
Nina, M. Robert and Mdlle. Flori on the other side of the footlights,
Trenchard and Marie killed in Galicia, the Kaiser and Hindenburg, the
Archbishop of Canterbury and the postmaster of my village in Glebeshire.
The curtain is coming down, the fat husband is deceived once again, the
lovers are in the bedroom listening behind the door, the comic waiter is
winking at the chamber-maid.
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