John bowed in various directions, and Faraday, taking him good-naturedly by the arm, led him to a garden-seat at the back of the stage.
"There!" he said. "You are one of the most privileged persons in London. You shall hear the finish of our rehearsal. There isn't a press man in London I'd have near the place."
"Very kind of you, I'm sure," John replied. "Is this, may I ask, the play that you are soon going to produce?"
"Three weeks from next Monday, I hope," Faraday told him. "Don't attempt to judge by anything you hear this afternoon. We are just deciding upon some cuts. See you later. You may smoke, if you like."
Twenty-four hours away from his silent hills, John looked out with puzzled eyes from his dusty seat among ropes and pulleys and leaning fragments of scenery. What he saw and heard seemed to him, for the most part, a meaningless tangle of gestures and phrases. The men and women in fashionable clothes, moving about before that gloomy space of empty auditorium, looked more like marionettes than creatures of flesh and blood, drawn this way and that at the bidding of the stout, masterly Frenchman, who was continually muttering exclamations and banging the manuscript upon his hand.
He kept his eyes fixed upon Louise. He told himself that he was in her presence at last. As the moments passed, it became more and more difficult for him to realize the actuality of the scene upon which he was looking. It seemed like a dream-picture, with unreal men and women moving about aimlessly, saying strange words.
Then there came a moment which brought a tingle into his blood, which plunged his senses into hot confusion. He rose to his feet. Faraday was sitting down, and Louise was resting both her hands upon his shoulders.
"Is there nothing I can be to you, then, Edmund?" she asked, her voice vibrating with a passion which he found it hard to believe was not real.
Faraday turned slowly in his chair. He held out his arms.
"One thing," he murmured.