She struck her hands together with a gesture which, to his amusement, he noticed she had caught from Cerdine.
“Oh, dear, I hadn’t thought of that! But surely it will reach them in the morning?”
“Some time in the morning, I suppose. You know the French provincial post is never in a hurry. I don’t believe your letter would have been delivered this evening in any case.” As this idea occurred to him he felt himself almost absolved.
“Perhaps, then, I ought to have telegraphed?”
“I’ll telegraph for you in the morning if you say so.”
The bell announcing the close of the entr’-acte shrilled through the café, and she sprang to her feet.
“Oh, come, come! We mustn’t miss it!”
Instantly forgetful of the Farlows, she slipped her arm through his and turned to push her way back to the theatre.
As soon as the curtain went up she as promptly forgot her companion. Watching her from the corner to which he had returned, Darrow saw that great waves of sensation were beating deliciously against her brain. It was as though every starved sensibility were throwing out feelers to the mounting tide; as though everything she was seeing, hearing, imagining, rushed in to fill the void of all she had always been denied.
Darrow, as he observed her, again felt a detached enjoyment in her pleasure. She was an extraordinary conductor of sensation: she seemed to transmit it physically, in emanations that set the blood dancing in his veins. He had not often had the opportunity of studying the effects of a perfectly fresh impression on so responsive a temperament, and he felt a fleeting desire to make its chords vibrate for his own amusement.