“Bring your friend to me.—B.”
“It will scarcely take us a moment,” Ellison continued. “Don’t stop to put on your coat; we are the last in the theatre now.”
Matravers, whose will was usually a very dominant one, found himself calmly obeying his companion. Following Ellison, he was bustled down a long, narrow passage, across a bare wilderness of boards and odd pieces of scenery, to the door of a room immediately behind the stage. As Ellison raised his fingers to knock, it was opened from the inside, and Berenice came out wrapped from head to foot in a black satin coat, and with a piece of white lace twisted around her hair. She stopped when she saw the two men, and held out her hand to Ellison, who immediately introduced Matravers.
Again Ellison fancied that in her greeting of him there were some traces of a former knowledge. But nothing in her words or in his alluded to it.
“I am very much honoured,” Matravers said simply. “I am a rare attendant at the theatre, and your performance gave me great pleasure.”
“I am very glad,” she answered. “Do you know that you made me wretchedly nervous? I was told just as I was going on that you had come to smash us all to atoms in that terrible Day.”
“I came as a critic,” he answered, “but I am a very incompetent one. Perhaps you will appreciate my ignorance more when I tell you that this is my first visit behind the scenes of a theatre.”
But nothing in her words or in his alluded to it