“Don’t let him burst himself,” cautioned Rose, welcoming the change of mood.  “I never knew a cat to purr so—­well, so thoroughly, did you?”

“He’s lost his hold of the brake,” Madame answered.  “Are you going to wait until Isabel comes home?”

“Of course not.”

“Then let’s go up and read for a little while.”

Rose waited until Madame was half way up the long flight before she turned down the lights and followed her.  It made a pretty picture—­the little white-haired lady in grey on the long stairway, with the yellow cat upon her shoulder, looking back with the inscrutable calmness of the Sphinx.

Rose felt that, for herself, sleep would be impossible until Isabel returned.  She hoped that Aunt Francesca would not want her to read aloud, but, as it chanced, she did.  However, the chosen book was of the sort which banishes insomnia, and, in less than an hour, Madame was sound asleep, with Mr. Boffin purring in his luxurious silk-lined basket at the foot of her bed.

Alone in her own room, Rose waited, frankly jealous of her young cousin and fiercely despising herself for it.  She recalled the happy hours she and Allison had spent with their music and berated herself bitterly for her selfishness, but to no avail.  As the hours dragged by, every moment seemed an eternity.  Worn by her unaccustomed struggle with self, she finally slept.

Meanwhile, Isabel was the gayest of the gay.  The glittering lights of the playhouse formed a fitting background for her, and Allison watched her beautiful, changing face with an ever-increasing sense of delight.  The play itself was an old story to him, but the girl was a new sensation, and while she watched the mimic world beyond the footlights, he watched her.

The curtain of the first act descended upon a woman, waiting at the window for a man who did not come, and, most happily, Isabel remembered the conversation at home in the earlier part of the evening.

“Foolish woman,” she said, “to wait at the window.”

“Why?” asked Allison, secretly amused.

“I wouldn’t wait at the window for an unmarried man, nor for a married man, either, unless he was my own husband.”

“Why?” he asked, again.

“Because men keep best in a cool dry atmosphere.  Didn’t you know that?”

“How did you happen to discover it, Sweet-and-Twenty?”

Isabel answered with a smile, which meant much or little, as one chose.  Presently she remembered something else that happened to be useful.

“Look,” she said, indicating a man in the front seat who had fallen asleep.  “He’s taking his pleasure sadly.”

“Perhaps he’s happier to be asleep.  He may not care for the play.”

“Somebody once said,” she went on hastily, seeing that she was making a good impression, “that life would be very endurable were it not for its pleasures.”

Allison laughed.  He had the sense of discovering a bright star that had been temporarily overshadowed by surrounding planets.