Certainly the _Holofernes_ of Mr. CLAUDE KING never for a moment
suggested it. I admit that I had not hitherto seen an Assyrian officer
making love on the edge of his grave and so had no exact precedent to
go by, but this officer, with his face far too well groomed for
the conclusion of a heavy banquet, and those rather anaemic and
perfunctory gestures of endearment, which had nothing to do with
the sombre forces of elemental passion, gave no hint of the sinister
workings of Fate.
This lack of atmosphere pervaded G.H.Q. Apart from Miss MCCARTHY, Mr.
THESIGER, whose performance as _Bagoas_ must have astonished those
who only knew him on the stage as a frivolous _flaneur_, was the sole
character who conveyed any sense of the general uncanniness of things.
Mr. ARNOLD BENNETT'S own novelties--the very rapid fraternization of
_Judith's_ little Cockney maid with the enemy; her own inexplicable
love-at-first-sight for an Ammonite pervert; the laborious
pretentiousness of _Ozias_, the Governor of Bethulia; the tedious
garrulity of the oldest inhabitant, and the topical reference, in the
manner of pantomime, to the War of 1914-1918 A.
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