'You don't look nervous, Harry,' said Geraldine when he came into the drawing-room before dinner on the evening of the production.
'Nervous?' said Henry. 'Of course I'm not.'
'Then, why have you forgotten to brush your hair, dearest?' she asked.
He glanced in a mirror. Yes, he had certainly forgotten to brush his hair.
'Sheer coincidence,' he said, and ate a hearty meal.
Geraldine drove to the theatre. She was to meet there Mrs. Knight and Aunt Annie, in whose breasts pride and curiosity had won a tardy victory over the habits of a lifetime; they had a stage-box. Henry remarked that it was a warm night and that he preferred to walk; he would see them afterwards.
No one could have been more surprised than Henry, when he arrived at Prince's Theatre, to discover that he was incapable of entering that edifice. He honestly and physically tried to go in by the stage-door, but he could not, and, instead of turning within, he kept a straight course along the footpath. It was as though an invisible barrier had been raised to prevent his ingress.
'Never mind!' he said. 'I'll walk to the Circus and back again, and then I'll go in.'
He walked to the Circus and back again, and once more failed to get himself inside Prince's Theatre.
'This is the most curious thing that ever happened to me,' he thought, as he stood for the second time in Piccadilly Circus. 'Why the devil can't I go into that theatre? I'm not nervous. I'm not a bit nervous.' It was so curious that he felt an impulse to confide to someone how curious it was.