The marquis knocks at his wife's door. Her voice is heard clearly, after a moment's pause.
"In a few minutes!" she replies.
The marquis resumes his flirtation. His companion becomes impatient—the marquis has pledged his word that she should be received by his wife. An ancient enmity against the Marquis de Guy prompts her to insist.
The marquis shrugs his shoulders and knocks more loudly than ever at his wife's door. She comes out—followed by Faraday.
"You asked me what I could do," she says, pointing to her lover. "You see now!"
There was a moment's breathless silence through the house. The scene in itself was a little beyond anything that the audience had expected. Sophy, who had been leaning over the edge of the box, turned around in no little anxiety. She heard the door slam. John had disappeared!
He left the theater with only his hat in his hand, turning up his coat by instinct as he passed through the driving rain. All his senses seemed tingling with some nameless horror. The brilliance of the language, the subtlety of the situation, seemed like some evil trail drawn across that one horrible climax. It was Louise who had come from that room and pointed to Faraday! Louise who confessed herself a—
He broke out into language as he walked. The desire of Samson burned in his heart—to stride back into the theater, to smash the scenery, to throw the puppets from the stage, one by one, to end forever this ghastly, unspeakable play. And all the time the applause rang in his ears. He had read with one swift glance the tense interest—almost lascivious, it seemed to him—on the faces of that great audience. The scene had tickled their fancies. It was to pander to such base feelings that Louise was upon the stage!
He reached his rooms—he scarcely knew how—and walked up-stairs. There he threw off some of his dripping garments, opened the window wide, and stood there.
He looked out over the Thames, and there was a red fire before his eyes. Stephen was right, he told himself. There was nothing but evil to be found here, nothing but bitter disappointment, nothing but the pain which deepens into anguish. Better to remain like Stephen, unloving and unloved, to draw nearer to the mountains, to find joy in the crops and the rain and the sunshine, to listen stonily to the cry of human beings as if to some voice from an unknown world.