Beatrice half closed her eyes. They had hailed a passing cab and she sank back among the cushions with a sigh of relief.
“Dear Leonard,” she murmured, “I am so glad, so very happy for your sake. This is the sort of thing which I hoped would happen.”
“And now tell me about yourselves,” he went on.
There was a sudden silence. Tavernake was conscious that Beatrice's clothes were distinctly shabbier, that the professor's hat was shiny. The professor cleared his throat.
“I do not wish,” he said, “to intrude our private matters upon one who, although I will not call him a stranger, is assuredly not one of our old friends. At the same time, I admit that a little trouble has arisen between Beatrice and myself, and we were discussing it at the moment you arrived. I shall appeal to you now. As an unprejudiced member of the audience to-night, Mr. Tavernake, you will give me your honest opinion?”
“Certainly,” Tavernake promised, with a sinking premonition of what was to come.
“What I complain of,” the professor began, speaking with elaborate and impressive slowness, “is that my performance is hurried over and that too long a time is taken up by Beatrice's songs. The management remark upon the applause which her efforts occasionally ensure, but, as I would point out to you, sir,” he continued, “a performance such as mine makes too deep an impression for the audience to show their appreciation of it by such vulgar methods as hand-clapping and whistling. You follow me, I trust, Mr. Tavernake?”
“Why, yes, of course,” Tavernake admitted.
“I take a sincere and earnest interest in my work,” the professor declared, “and I feel that when it has to be scamped that my daughter may sing a music-hall ditty, the result is, to say the least of it, undignified. For some reason or other, I have been unable to induce the management to see entirely with me, but my point is that Beatrice should sing one song only, and that the additional ten minutes should be occupied by me in either a further exposition of my extraordinary powers as a hypnotist, or in a little address to the audience upon the hidden sciences. Now I appeal to you, Mr. Tavernake, as a young man of common sense. What is your opinion?”
Tavernake, much too honest to be capable in a general way of duplicity, was on the point of giving it, but he caught Beatrice's imploring gaze. Her lips were moving. He hesitated.