Did Catherine hear? he wondered. Apparently not. He never surprised in her face or manner a hint of consciousness of self or of being stared at and commented upon. “But she can’t avoid hearing,” he said to himself. “These asses are braying right in her ears. And why should she get herself up in all these clothes, if it ain’t to be stared at?”
And, between performances, the performers in the Longview box dined in the palm garden at the Waldorf, with their acquaintances at the surrounding tables, and gossip of their engagement flying, and curious glances straying toward them over the tops of wine-glasses, and whispers and smiles—and Catherine soulful and unconscious. On Friday night, as they drove from the Waldorf to the Garden—she had given him her hand to hold under cover of the lap-robe—she said, with a sigh: “I’m so glad it’s nearly over. Only to-night and to-morrow night.”
“Not to-morrow afternoon?” asked Frothingham. “Why do we miss a chance to exhibit?”
“Only the servants and the children go to-morrow afternoon,” replied Catherine sweetly. “I’m worn out and sick of it all. So many go merely for self-display; so few of us, not to speak of those dreadful people in the promenade, care anything about the dear, beautiful, noble horses.”
“Why look at horses,” said Honoria, “when there’s a human show that’s so much more interesting? It may be vulgar, but it’s amusing. I’m afraid my tastes are not refined.”
Frothingham looked at her with the expression of a thirsty man who is having a glass of cold water. “That’s what I think,” said he. “And I’m fond of horses.” A faint sneer in his satirical drawl made Catherine give him a furtive glance of anxiety—was the worm thinking of turning?
When they were in the box and the others were busy she said to him, in her tenderest tone: “You’re dreadfully bored by all this, aren’t you? And I thought it would give you pleasure for us to be together so much.”
“As if we were a pair of new chimpanzees in a zoo”
The surliness cleared from his face somewhat. “No, I’m not bored. But I hate to be shown off. And, while you’ve been unconscious of it, the fact is that you and I have been sitting here in this cage five or six hours a day, gaped at as if we were a pair of new chimpanzees in a zoo.” As he remembered his wrongs, his anger rose upon the wine he had freely drunk at dinner. “It’s what I call low—downright rotten, Catherine,” he finished energetically.