"I hate to hear you talking like that, Gilbert. Anybody'd think you were a dried-up old rip. You're frightfully cynical...."

"That's because I'm so young, Quinny. I'm younger than you are, you know ... six months ... but I'll grow up. I _will_ grow up, Quinny, I swear I will, and get full of the milk of lovingkindness. Pa.s.s the meringues.

They play the devil with my inside, but I like them and I don't care ...

only Lord help the actors to-night!"

"I suppose Lady Cecily got tired of you, Gilbert," Henry said deliberately. He felt angry with him and tried to hurt him. The beauty of Lady Cecily had filled him with longing to meet and know her, and he had a strange sense of jealousy when he thought of Gilbert's friendship with her.

"No," Gilbert answered, "I don't think she got tired of me. I think she still cares for me as much as ever she did!..."

"d.a.m.ned conceit!" Henry exclaimed, laughing to cover the jealousy that was in him.

"Oh, no, Quinny, not really. You'll understand that soon, I expect!" He pushed his tea-cup away from him, and sat back in his chair. "I suppose it is caddish to talk of her like this," he went on. "One ought to bear one's wounds in silence and feel no resentment at all ... but somehow she draws out the caddish part of me. There are women like that, Quinny.

There's a nasty, low, mean streak in every man, I don't care who he is, and some women seem to find it very easily. Here, let's get out of this.

You pay. I've had a sugary bun and a couple of meringues...."

5

Later in the evening they went to the theatre together. As they walked up the steps into the entrance hall, Henry saw Lady Cecily standing in a small group of men and women who were talking and laughing very heartily.

"There she is!" he whispered to Gilbert.

"Who is?"

"Lady Cecily!"

"Oh, so she is. Let's find our seats!"

"Perhaps you could catch her eye, Gilbert...."

"Catch my grandmother!" said Gilbert. "Come on!"

But if Gilbert were not willing to catch Lady Cecily's eye, Lady Cecily was very willing to catch his. She saw him walking towards the stalls, and she left her group of friends and went over to him and touched his arm. "Hilloa, Gilbert!" she said, holding her hand out to him. "I thought I should see you here to-night!"

She spoke in louder tones than most women speak, and her voice sounded as if it were full of laughter. There was something in her att.i.tude which stirred Henry, something which vaguely reminded him of a proud animal, stretching its limbs after sleep. Her thick, golden hair, cunningly bound about her head, glistened in the softened light, and he could almost see golden, downy gleams on her cheeks. She held her skirts about her, as she stood in front of Gilbert, and Henry could see her curving b.r.e.a.s.t.s rising and falling very gently beneath her silken dress.

The odour of some disturbing perfume floated from her.... He moved a step nearer to her, wondering why Gilbert did not smile at her nor show any signs of pleasure at meeting her. It seemed to him to be impossible for any one but the most curmudgeonly of men to behave so ungraciously to so beautiful a woman, or to resist her radiant smiles. She turned to him as he moved towards her, and he saw that her eyes were grey. He heard Gilbert mumbling the introduction.

"So glad!" she said, shaking hands with him. He had expected her to bow to him, and had not been prepared for the offer of her hand. He inwardly cursed his clumsiness as he changed his gesture. "I saw you in the Park with Gilbert this afternoon, didn't I?" she added.

"Yes," he answered, and could say no more. Shyness had fallen on him, and he stood before her, grinning fatuously, and twisting a b.u.t.ton on his waistcoat, but unable to speak. "Yes," he said, after a while, "I was with Gilbert in the Park this afternoon!"

"Speak up, you fool!" he was saying to himself. "Here's the loveliest woman you've ever met waiting for you to speak to her, and all you can do is to repeat her phrases as if you were a newly-breeched brat aping its parent. Speak up, you fool!..."

He felt his face turning red and hot. Almost before he knew what he was saying his tongue began to wag, and he heard himself saying, in a stiff, stilted voice, "It was very nice in the Park this afternoon!..." _Oh, ba.n.a.l fool_, he thought, _she will despise you now, as if you were a great, gawky lout_....

She turned away from him, and spoke to Gilbert. "I've been at Dulbury,"

she said, "for six weeks. That's where I got all this brown!..." She laughed and pointed to her cheeks. "I'm so glad to get back. The country bores me stiff. Nothing to see but the scenery. Oh dear!" She almost yawned at her remembrance of the country. "And things are always biting me or stinging me. I'm miserable all the time I'm there!"

"Then why do you go?" said Gilbert.

"Jimphy wanted to go. Jimphy thinks it's his duty to show himself to the tenants now and again. It's the only return he can make, poor dear, for all that rent they pay!"

Gilbert said "Hm!" and then turned to go to the stalls. "It's Jimphy's birthday to-day," she said, and he turned to her again. "That's why we're here to-night. Together, I mean. He's treating me to a box. Come round and talk to us, Gilbert, after the first act ... and you, too, Mr.... Mr!..."

She fumbled over his name. Gilbert, as is the custom in England when introducing people, had spoken the name so indistinctly that she had not heard it.

"Quinn!" he said.

"Of course," she replied. "Mr. Quinn. I'm awfully stupid about names.

You'll come, too?"

"I should like to!"

"Do. Gilbert, don't forget. Jimphy's very morose this evening. He's thirty-one to-day, and he thinks that old age is creeping over him!"

"All right," said Gilbert gloomily, and then he and Henry went to their seats.

"Who is Jimphy?" said Henry, as they walked down the stairs into the auditorium.

"Her husband. Didn't you notice something hanging around in the vestibule while we were talking to her?"

"No. There were so many people about!"

"Well, if you had noticed something hanging around, that would have been Jimphy. His real name is Jasper, but Cecily never calls any one by his real name ... except me. She can't think of a name for me!"

They entered the auditorium and stood for a moment looking about the theatre. People were pa.s.sing quickly into their seats now, and the theatre was full of an eager air, of ma.s.sed pleasure, and a loud buzz of conversation spread over the stalls from the pit where rows of young women whispered to each other excitedly as this well-known person and that well-known person entered.

"That's 'er, that's 'er!" one girl said in a frenzied whisper to her companion.

"Viola Tree?" the other girl, gazing vacantly into the stalls, replied.

"No, silly! Ellen Terry! Clap, can't you?"

And they clapped their hands as the actress went to her seat.

There was more clapping when Sir Charles Wyndham came in and took his seat.

"Is it Viola Tree?" the girl repeated.

"No, silly. It's Wyndham. Bray-vo! Seventy, if 'e's a day, an' don't look it. My word, I am enjoyin' myself, I can tell you! Everybody's 'ere to-night. Of course, it's St. James's, of course!..."

Popular criminal lawyers came in and sat next to racing marquises; and lords and ladies mingled with actresses who very ostentatiously accompanied their mothers. A few men of letters and a crowd of dramatic critics, depressed, unenthusiastic men, leavened the ma.s.s of the semi-great. The rest were the children of Israel.

"Jews to the right of us, Jews to the left of us!..." Gilbert said.

"Anti-Semite!" Henry replied.

"Only in practice, Quinny, not in theory. I'll see you at the interval!"