It was Sally!
Directly she thought that he had seen her, her head lowered guiltily again. She kept it bent, hidden from him, lifting a programme to shield her utterly from his gaze.
He put down his glasses on the ledge of the box.
"Do you allow that sort of thing?" Mrs. Durlacher whispered as she took them up.
"My God—no!" he exclaimed.
She smiled in her mind. That word—allow—was chosen with discretion.
CHAPTER IX
As the curtain fell Traill proposed supper at a restaurant. They readily agreed. Mrs. Durlacher, in the best of spirits, thanking Providence for the weakness of human nature that had driven Sally to follow Traill to the theatre, still thrilling with the sound of his exclamation in her ears, would have lit the dullest entertainment in the world with the humour of her mood. There was a part for her to play. She played it. All her remarks, bristling with the pointed satires of spiteful criticism, were a foil to the gentle temper of Coralie's conversation.
"My God!" said Traill, as they walked down one of the passages to the foyer, and he listened to his sister's verdict upon a woman who had gone out before them. "Do you women allow a stitch of respectability to hang on each other's backs?"
"She'd want more than a stitch," Mrs. Durlacher replied, "if she's not going to put on more clothes than that."