The next instant he was talking alone to Elsie in another corner while the rest of the room respectfully observed.
"So you deigned to come!" said Elsie April. "You did get my card."
A little paint did her no harm, and the accentuation of her eyebrows and lips and the calculated disorder of her hair were not more than her powerful effulgent physique could stand. In a costume of green and silver she was magnificent, overwhelmingly magnificent. Her varying voice and her glance at once sincere, timid and bold, produced the most singular sensations behind Edward Henry's soft frilled shirt-front. And he thought that he had never been through any experience so disturbing and so fine as just standing in front of her.
"I ought to be saying nice things to her," he reflected. But, no doubt because he had been born in the Five Towns, he could not formulate in his mind a single nice thing.
"Well, what do you think of it?" she asked, looking full at him, and the glance too had a strange significance. It was as if she had said: "Are you a man, or aren't you?"
"I think you're splendid," he exclaimed.
"Now please!" she protested. "Don't begin in that strain. I know I'm very good for an amateur—"
"But really! I'm not joking."
She shook her head.
"What do you think of my part for Rose? Wouldn't she be tremendous in it? Wouldn't she be tremendous?... What a chance!"