To their surprise the ringer was Sidney. He was shown into the dining-room.

'Good-evening, all,' he said. 'I've come as a subst.i.tute for Raphael.'

Esther grew white.

'Why, what has happened to him?' she asked.

'Nothing. I had a wire to say he was unexpectedly detained in the City, and asking me to take Addie and to call for you.'

Esther turned from white to red. How rude of Raphael! How disappointing not to meet him after all! And did he think she could thus unceremoniously be handed over to somebody else? She was about to beg to be excused, when it struck her a refusal would look too pointed. Besides, she did not fear Sidney now. It would be a test of her indifference. So she murmured instead:

'What can detain him?'

'Charity, doubtless. Do you know that after he is f.a.gged out with upholding the _Flag_ from early morning till late eve, he devotes the later eve to gratuitous tuition, lecturing, and the like?'

'No,' said Esther, softened. 'I knew he came home late, but I thought he had to report communal meetings.'

'That too. But Addie tells me he never came home at all one night last week. He was sitting up with some wretched dying pauper.'

'He'll kill himself,' said Esther anxiously.

'People are right about him. He is quite hopeless,' said Percy Saville, the solitary guest, tapping his forehead significantly.

'Perhaps it is we who are hopeless,' said Esther sharply.

'I wish we were all as sensible,' said Mrs. Henry Goldsmith, turning on the unhappy stockbroker with her most superior air. 'Mr. Leon always reminds me of Judas Maccabaeus.'

He shrank before the blaze of her mature beauty, the fulness of her charms revealed by her rich evening dress, her hair radiating strange subtle perfume. His eyes sought Mr. Goldsmith's for refuge and consolation.

'That is so,' said Mr. Goldsmith, rubbing his red chin. 'He is an excellent young man.'

'May I trouble you to put on your things at once, Miss Ansell?' said Sidney. 'I have left Addie in the carriage, and we are rather late. I believe it is usual for ladies to put on "things" even when in evening dress. I may mention that there is a bouquet for you in the carriage, and, however unworthy a subst.i.tute I may be for Raphael, I may at least claim he would have forgotten to bring you that.'

Esther smiled despite herself as she left the room to get her cloak.

She was chagrined and disappointed, but she resolved not to inflict her ill-humour on her companions.

She had long since got used to carriages, and when they arrived at the theatre she took her seat in the box without heart-fluttering. It was an old discovery now that boxes had no connection with oranges nor stalls with costers' barrows.

The house was brilliant. The orchestra was playing the overture.

'I wish Mr. Shakespeare would write a new play,' grumbled Sidney. 'All these revivals make him lazy--heavens! what his fees must tot up to!

If I were not sustained by the presence of you two girls, I should no more survive the fifth act than most of the characters. Why don't they brighten the piece up with ballet-girls?'

'Yes, I suppose you blessed Mr. Leon when you got his telegram,' said Esther. 'What a bore it must be to you to be saddled with his duties!'

'Awful!' admitted Sidney gravely. 'Besides, it interferes with my work.'

'Work?' said Addie. 'You know you only work by sunlight.'

'Yes, that's the best of my profession--in England. It gives you such opportunities of working--at other professions.'

'Why, what do you work at?' inquired Esther, laughing.

'Well, there's amus.e.m.e.nt--the most difficult of all things to achieve!

Then there's poetry. You don't know what a dab I am at rondeaux and barcarolles. And I write music, too--lovely little serenades to my lady-loves, and reveries that are like dainty pastels.'

'All the talents!' said Addie, looking at him with a fond smile. 'But if you have any time to spare from the curling of your lovely silken moustache, which is entirely like a delicate pastel, will you kindly tell me what celebrities are present?'

'Yes, do,' added Esther. 'I have only been to two first-nights, and then I had n.o.body to point out the lions.'

'Well, first of all I see a very celebrated painter in a box--a man who has improved considerably on the weak draughtsmanship displayed by Nature in her human figures, and the amateurishness of her glaring sunsets.'

'Who's that?' inquired Addie and Esther eagerly.

'I think he calls himself Sidney Graham; but that, of course, is only a _nom de pinceau_.'

'Oh!' said the girls, with a reproachful smile.

'Do be serious,' said Esther. 'Who is that stout gentleman with the bald head?' She peered down curiously at the stalls through her opera-gla.s.s.

'What, the lion without the mane? That's Tom Day, the dramatic critic of a dozen papers. A terrible Philistine! Lucky for Shakespeare he didn't flourish in Elizabethan times!'

He rattled on till the curtain rose, and the hushed audience settled down to the enjoyment of the tragedy.

'This looks as if it is going to be the true Hamlet,' said Esther, after the first act.

'What do you mean by the true Hamlet?' queried Sidney cynically.

'The Hamlet for whom life is at once too big and too little,' said Esther.

'And who was at once mad and sane,' laughed Sidney. 'The plain truth is that Shakespeare followed the old tale, and what you take for subtlety is but the blur of uncertain handling. Aha! you look shocked.

Have I found your religion at last?'

'No; my reverence for our national bard is based on reason,' rejoined Esther seriously. 'To conceive Hamlet, the typical nineteenth-century intellect, in that bustling picturesque Elizabethan time was a creative feat bordering on the miraculous. And then look at the solemn, inexorable march of Destiny in his tragedies, awful as its advance in the Greek dramas. Just as the marvels of the old fairy-tales were an instinctive prevision of the miracles of modern science, so this idea of Destiny seems to me an instinctive antic.i.p.ation of the formulas of modern science. What we want to-day is a dramatist who shall show us the great natural silent forces, working the weal and woe of human life through the illusions of consciousness and freewill.'

'What you want to-night, Miss Ansell, is black coffee,' said Sidney; 'and I'll tell the attendant to get you a cup, for I dragged you away from dinner before the crown and climax of the meal. I have always noticed myself that when I am interrupted in my meals all sorts of bugbears, scientific or otherwise, take possession of my mind.'

He called the attendant.

'Esther has the most nonsensical opinions,' said Addie gravely. 'As if people weren't responsible for their actions! Do good, and all shall be well with thee, is sound Bible teaching and sound common-sense.'

'Yes, but isn't it the Bible that says, "The fathers have eaten a sour grape, and the teeth of the children are set on edge"?' Esther retorted.

Addie looked perplexed. 'It sounds contradictory,' she said honestly.

'Not at all, Addie,' said Esther. 'The Bible is a literature, not a book. If you choose to bind Tennyson and Milton in one volume that doesn't make them a book. And you can't complain if you find contradictions in the text. Don't you think the sour grape text the truer, Mr. Graham?'

'Don't ask me, please. I'm prejudiced against anything that appears in the Bible.'