And there were murmurs of approbation.

Rose Euclid gazed at Edward Henry palely and weakly.  He considered her much less effective here than in her box.  But her febrile gaze was effective enough to produce in him the needle-stab again, the feeling of gloom, of pessimism, of being gradually overtaken by an unseen and mysterious avenger.

“Yes, indeed!” said he.

He thought to himself:  “Now’s the time for me to behave like Edward Henry Machin, and teach these people a thing or two!” But he could not.

A pretty young girl summoned all her forces to address the great proprietor of the Regent, to whom, however, she had not been introduced, and with a charming nervous earnest lisp said: 

“But don’t you think it’s a great play, Mr. Machin?”

“Of course!” he replied, inwardly employing the most fearful and shocking anathemas.

“We were sure you would!”

The young people glanced at each other with the satisfaction of proved prophets.

“D’you know that not another manager has taken the trouble to come here!” said a second earnest young woman.

Edward Henry’s self-consciousness was now acute.  He would have paid a ransom to be alone on a desert island in the Indian seas.  He looked downwards, and noticed that all these bright eager persons, women and men, were wearing blue stockings or socks.

“Miss April is free now,” said Marrier in his ear.

The next instant he was talking alone to Elsie in another corner while the rest of the room respectfully observed.

“So you deigned to come!” said Elsie April.  “You did get my card.”

A little paint did her no harm, and the accentuation of her eyebrows and lips and the calculated disorder of her hair were not more than her powerful effulgent physique could stand.  In a costume of green and silver she was magnificent, overwhelmingly magnificent.  Her varying voice and her glance at once sincere, timid and bold, produced the most singular sensations behind Edward Henry’s soft frilled shirt-front.  And he thought that he had never been through any experience so disturbing and so fine as just standing in front of her.

“I ought to be saying nice things to her,” he reflected.  But, no doubt because he had been born in the Five Towns, he could not formulate in his mind a single nice thing.

“Well, what do you think of it?” she asked, looking full at him, and the glance too had a strange significance.  It was as if she had said:  “Are you a man, or aren’t you?”

“I think you’re splendid,” he exclaimed.

“Now please!” she protested.  “Don’t begin in that strain.  I know I’m very good for an amateur—­”

“But really!  I’m not joking.”

She shook her head.

“What do you think of my part for Rose?  Wouldn’t she be tremendous in it?  Wouldn’t she be tremendous?...  What a chance!”