"I might as well try to flirt with a statue!" she declared, discontentedly. "What makes you so unlike other people, you man of granite? You used to kiss me very clumsily when I asked you to, and now—why, how hot your hand is!"
John pushed her away almost roughly.
"Yes, I know I did," he admitted, "and now I don't want to any more, do you see? It's this cursed place and this cursed life! One's feet seem always on the sands. I wouldn't have believed it when I first came here. Don't tease me, Sophy," he added, turning toward her suddenly. "I am rather inclined to despise myself these last few weeks. Don't make me worse—don't make me loathe myself!"
She shrugged her shoulders a little pettishly as she leaned back in the cab.
"You are nothing but a crank," she declared; "you and your brother, too! You've lived among those flinty rocks till you've become almost like them yourselves."
The taxi drew up at the theater. John, with a little sigh of relief, was already out upon the pavement. Sophy's eyes were still shining at him through her veil, as she walked lightly and gracefully by his side, but he led the way in silence down the stairs to the box that he had taken for the season.
"And now," she exclaimed with a pout, as she leaned back in the corner, "my little reign is over! You will sit in the front seat and you will look at Louise, and feel Louise, and your eyes will shine Louise, until the moment for your escape comes, when you can go round to the back and meet her; and then you will try to make excuses to get rid of me, so that you can drive her home alone!"
"Rubbish, Sophy!" he answered, as he drew a chair to her side. "You know quite well that I can't sit in the front of the box, for the very prosaic reason that I haven't changed my clothes. We shall both have to linger here in the shadows."
"Well, there is some comfort in that, at any rate," Sophy confessed. "If I become absolutely overcome by my emotions, I can hold your hand."
"You had better not," John observed. "The stage manager has his eye on you. If his own artists won't behave in the theater, what can he expect of the audience?"