Then she saw the tall and calm Rosamund, with her grey hair and black attire and her subduing self-complacency, making a way between the rows of stalls towards her.
“I wanted to see you,” said Rosamund, after the formal greetings. “Very much.” Her voice was as kind and as unrelenting as the grave.
At this point Miss Ingate ought to have yielded her seat to the terrific Rosamund, but she failed to do so, doubtless by inadvertence.
“Will you come into the foyer for a moment?” Rosamund inflexibly suggested.
“Isn’t the interval nearly over?” said Audrey.
“Oh, no!”
And as a fact there was not the slightest sign of the interval being nearly over. Audrey obediently rose. But the invitation had been so conspicuously addressed to herself that Miss Ingate, gathering her wits, remained in her chair.
The foyer—decorated in the Cracovian taste—was dotted with cigarette smokers and with those who had fled from the interval. Rosamund did not sit down; she did not try for seclusion in a corner. She stepped well into the foyer, and then stood still, and absently lighted a cigarette, omitting to offer a cigarette to Audrey. Rosamund’s air of a deaconess made the cigarette extremely remarkable.
“I wanted to tell you about Jane Foley,” began Rosamund quietly. “Have you heard?”
“No! What?”