She left Elizabeth's house in a very unhappy mood, and at a rapid walk proceeded to her lodging in Bloomsbury. She would have felt the confinement of a cab to be intolerable, but it was a relief to set her personality against the friction of a million of encompassing wills. And in a short time she succumbed to that condition of electricity which they evolve, and permitted herself to be moved by it without considering her steps.
At length she was hungry, and she turned into a place of refreshment and ate with more healthy desire than she had felt for many months, and then the restless, fretting creature within was pacified, and she resolved to walk quietly to her room and sleep before she suffered herself to think any more. But as she was following out this plan she came to a famous theatre, and the name at the entrance attracted her. "I will be my own judge," she said. "I will see, and hear, and be more unmerciful to myself than any other could be."
So she entered the place and sat throughout three scenes. She did not wait for the final act. There was no necessity. She had arrived at her verdict. It was in her eyes and attitude when she left the building, but she gave it no voice until she sat weary and sad before the glimmering fire in her room.
"I could be Queen of England as easily as I could be a prima donna," she said mournfully. "There was perhaps a time--perhaps--perhaps, when youth and beauty and love could have helped me, but that time has gone for ever."
She said the words slowly, and the weight of despair was on each one. For she realised that in her case effort had brought forth no lasting fruit and that endurance had been without avail, and she was exceedingly sorrowful. For there is a singular vitality in the idea of public singing or acting when once it has taken root in any nature, and Denasia had been subject that night to one of its periods of revival. She had told herself that "she would probably have a thousand pounds; that she could go to Italy and pay for the best teachers; that it would please Roland if he knew, if he remembered, for her to do so; that it would annoy Elizabeth in many ways if she became a singer; that she would show the world it was possible to sing and act and yet be in every respect womanly, pure-hearted, and blameless before God and man."