After that they noticed each other’s presence for three more performances, and then, when it was her ninth and his thirty-sixth—for the enthusiasts of The Immortal Hour kept jealous count of their visits—and they found themselves sitting in the same row with only twelve empty seats between them, he moved up six nearer to her when the curtain went down between the two scenes of the first act, and when it went down at the end of the first act, after that love scene which invariably roused the small band of the faithful to a kind of mystic frenzy of delight, he moved up the other six and sat down boldly beside her.
She smiled at him, a friendly and welcoming smile.
‘It’s so beautiful,’ he said apologetically, as if this explained his coming over to her.
‘Perfectly beautiful,’ she said; and added, ‘This is my ninth time.’
And he said, ‘This is my thirty-sixth.’
And she said, ‘I know.’
And he said, ‘How do you know?’
And she said, ‘Because I heard you tell someone when it was your thirty-secondth, and I’ve been counting since.’
So they made friends, and Christopher thought he had never seen anybody with such a sweet way of smiling, or heard anybody with such a funny little coo of a voice.
She was little altogether; a little thing, in a little hat which she never had to take off because hardly ever was there anybody behind her, and, anyhow, even in a big hat she was not of the size that obstructs views. Always the same hat; never a different one, or different clothes. Although the clothes were pretty, very pretty, he somehow felt, perhaps because they were never different, that she wasn’t very well off; and he also somehow felt she was older than he was—just a little older, nothing at all to matter; and presently he began somehow also to feel that she was married.