Hubert hoped to reach his box without meeting critics or authors.  The serving-maids bowed and smiled,—­he was the author of the play.  ’They’ll think still more of me if the notices are right,’ he thought, as he hurried upstairs, and from behind the curtain of his box he peeped down and counted the critics who edged their way down the stalls.  Harding stood in the third row talking to a young man.  He said, ’You mean the woman with the black hair piled into a point, and fastened with a steel circlet.  A face of sheep-like sensuality.  Red lips and a round receding chin.  A large bosom, and two thin arms showing beneath the opera cloak, which she has not yet thrown from her shoulders.  I do not know her—­une laideur attirante.  Many a man might be interested in her.  But do you see the woman in the stage-box?  You would not believe it, but she is sixty, and has only just begun to speak of herself as an old woman.  She kept her figure, and had an admirer when she was fifty-eight.’

‘What has become of him?’

’They quarrelled; two years ago he told her he hoped never to see her ugly old face again.  And that delicate little creature in the box next to her—­that pale diaphanous face?’

‘With a young man hanging over her whispering in her ear?’

’Yes.  She hates the theatre; it gives her neuralgia; but she attends all the first nights because her one passion is to be made love to in public.  If her admirer did not hang over her in front of the box just as that man is doing, she would not tolerate him for a week.’

At that moment the conversation was interrupted by a new-comer, who asked if he had seen the play when it was first produced.

‘Yes,’ said Harding; ‘I did.’  And he continued his search for acquaintances amid white rows of female backs, necks, and half-seen profiles—­amid the black cloth shoulders cut sharply upon the illumined curtain.

‘And what do you think of it?  Do you think it will succeed this time?’

’Ford will create an impression in the part; but I don’t think the piece will run.’

‘And why?  Because the public is too stupid?’

’Partly, and partly because Price is only an intentionist.  He cannot carry an idea quite through.’

‘Are you going to write about it?’

‘I may.’

‘And what will you say?’

’Oh, most interesting things to be said.  Let’s take the case of Hubert Price ...  Ah, there, the curtain is going up.’

The curtain rolled slowly up, and in a small country drawing-room, in very simple but very pointedly written dialogue, the story of Mrs. Holmes’ domestic misfortunes was gradually unfolded.  It appeared that she had flirted with Captain Grey; he had written her some compromising letters, and she had once been to his rooms alone.  So the Court had pronounced a decree nisi.  But Mrs. Holmes had not been unfaithful to her husband.  She had flirted with Captain Grey because her husband’s attentions to a certain Mrs. Barrington had maddened her, and in her jealous rage had written foolish letters, and been to see Captain Grey.