“I think they’ve only just done the first act,” the woman breathed.  “I know they didn’t begin till seven.  Oh!  Mr. Machin, of course it’s no affair of mine, but I’ve worked in a good many theatres, and I do think it’s such a mistake to have the dress-rehearsal quite private.  If you get a hundred or so people in the stalls then it’s an audience, and there’s much less delay and everything goes much better.  But when it’s private a dress-rehearsal is just like any other rehearsal.”

“Only more so—­perhaps,” said Edward Henry, smiling.

He saw that he had made her happy; but he saw also that he had given her empire over him.

“I’ve got your tea here,” she said, rather like a hospital-nurse now.  “Won’t you drink it?”

“I’ll drink it if it’s not stewed,” he muttered.

“Oh!” she protested, “of course it isn’t!  I poured it off the leaves into another teapot before I brought it up.”

She went behind the barrier, and reappeared balancing a cup of tea with a slice of sultana cake edged on to the saucer.  And as she handed it to him—­the sustenance of rehearsals—­she gazed at him and he could almost hear her eyes saying:  “You poor thing!”

There was nothing that he hated so much as to be pitied.

“You go home!” he commanded.

“Oh, but—­”

“You go home!  See?” He paused, threatening.  “If you don’t clear out on the tick I’ll chuck this cup and saucer down into the stalls.”

Horrified, she vanished.

He sighed his relief.

After some time the leader of the orchestra climbed into his chair, and the orchestra began to play, and the curtain went up again, on the second act of the masterpiece in hexameters.  The new scenery, which Edward Henry had with extraordinary courage insisted on Saracen Givington substituting for the original incomprehensibilities displayed at the Azure Society’s performance, rather pleased him.  Its colouring was agreeable, and it did resemble something definite.  You could, though perhaps not easily, tell what it was meant to represent.  The play proceeded, and the general effect was surprisingly pleasant to Edward Henry.  And then Rose Euclid as Haidee came on for the great scene of the act.  From the distance of the gallery she looked quite passably youthful, and beyond question she had a dominating presence in her resplendent costume.  She was incomparably and amazingly better than she had been at the few previous rehearsals which Edward Henry had been unfortunate enough to witness.  She even reminded him of his earliest entrancing vision of her.