She hesitated. She had not been to the opera yet. She could not bear the publicity of that blazing circle, but she had kept her box. After all, she thought, she could sit in the back of it, and music was one of the greatest of her pleasures.
"Will you join me there?" she said.
"It will be like old times."
"Not quite," she answered.
Still with his hand on the knob of the door, as if he were just going to open it for her, he detained her, trying to make her talk, asking her about her friends, her work, her health; trying to hit upon the master key to her mind, and at last, for he was a man of long experience, he found it.
"And that damned crook who prosecuted your case," he said. "Do you ever see him?"
She shook her head.
"I prefer not even to think of him," she replied, and this time she made a gesture that he should open the door. Instead he stepped in front of it. He had waked her; he had her attention at last.
"Naturally, naturally," he said, "but I wish you would think of him for a minute. I'm in rather a fix about that fellow."
She longed to know what the fix was, but she did not dare hear. She said softly, "Please don't make me think of him, Stephen. I'd really rather not."