Belinda squirmed on the car. Arrived at the theatre she squirmed still more. The lobby was well filled. It was almost time for the curtain. She hated leading her line down the middle aisle to the fourth row; she hated the smiles and comment that followed them; she loathed being made conspicuous—and her sentiments were not modified, as she followed the last of the girls through the door, by hearing the manager say jocularly to the doorkeeper:
"My eye! and who's chaperoning the pretty chaperon?"
There was a balk, a tangle, when the fourth row was reached. The acquaintances between most of the girls dated from the morning of that day, but already each of the group had strong convictions in regard to the girls beside whom she chose to sit, and hours of discussion and debate could not have solved the problem to the satisfaction of all concerned.
Belinda firmly hustled the protestants into the seats without regard to prejudices, and sat down in the end chair exhausted and rebellious. She detested the Young Person, individually and collectively. She resented being bear leader. She thought longingly of the Lanleyville High School and the home friends, and the fact that New York seethed round the theatre in which she sat afforded her no consolation. She was profoundly indifferent to the popular actor before whom her charges became as dumb, adoring worshippers. In a little while she would have to lead her flock of geese home, and she wished she dared lose them and run away. She felt a sudden sympathy for Kittie Dayton, whose pudgy, swollen face, though now radiant, looked like an unfinished biscuit. Belinda, too, was homesick—deeply, darkly, dismally homesick. Even her sense of humour was swamped. June and the end of her contract loomed but vaguely beyond a foggy waste of months.
"Isn't he just too perfectly sweet, Miss Carewe?" gurgled Amelia Bowers in her ear.
Belinda was non-committal.
"Did you ever meet him on the street?"
Belinda had never had that rapture.
"Well, one might, you know," said Amelia hopefully. "Alice Ransom plumped right into Faversham, one day, when she was in New York, and he took off his hat to her and said, 'Beg pardon.' She said she felt perfectly faint. His voice sounded just like it does on the stage, and he had the most fascinating eyes and the sweetest bulldog. Alice said it seemed like Fate, running right into him that way, the first time she went out alone. She walked down Fifth Avenue at that same time every day for a week, but she never met him again."
The star and his leading lady fell into each other's arms for the final curtain and later were brought out to bow their amiable acknowledgements, with results disastrous to the seams of Amelia's white gloves.