Now Rigoletto, well sung, is a treat not to be despised even by a jaded theatregoer, and the younger Miss Langford was neither jaded nor lacking the artistic sense which finds its complement in good music. Wherefore she gave a little sigh of regret when the curtain ran down on the last act, and stood up mechanically in her place that Antrim might adjust her wrap.
“Great show, wasn’t it?” he said, making a praise-worthy but purely manlike effort to strike the proper note of appreciation.
She did not respond, and when they came out in the lighted foyer he saw the rapt isolation of her mood and resented it.
“Up on top of the mountain as usual, aren’t you? Did you happen to come down far enough any time during the evening to think of the thing as a play meant to amuse people?” He tried to say it jestingly, but the whetstone of sarcasm sharpened the words in spite of the placable intention.
“Don’t tease me, please, Harry; at least, not now while I’m in the seventh heaven of the aftermath. I’ll talk practical things with you by and by, if you like, but just now it would be sacrilege.”
Ordinarily Antrim would have laughed, as he was wont to laugh at her extravagances. As it was, he sulked and was silent while they were drifting with the slow-moving human glacier out through the vestibule and during the long street-car ride over to the Highlands.
Since early morning he had been fighting a desperate battle with the Apollyon who disputes the way with that man who is foolish enough to set the day and hour in which a question of moment is to be decided. No sooner had he written it down that Isabel should that evening be brought to hear reason, than an imp of disorder came and sat at his elbow, and after this the business of his office went awry and the day became a lengthened misery.
He had quarrelled with his stenographer, found fault with the operator, and made life burdensome for the office boy. Last, and worst of all, just before the day’s end he had fallen into a wrangle over the wires with the division train despatcher at Lone Pine Junction, the upshot of which was to bring the man’s resignation, garnished with a few terse “wire” oaths, clicking back through the sounder in the superintendent’s office.
So much for the day’s tribulations. But since he had not taken the trouble to tell her, Isabel knew naught of these things. Hence it was not until they had left the car and were nearing the Hollywood gate that she began to wonder if his silence were altogether of abstraction.
“You are in a sweet temper to-night, aren’t you, Harry?” she said, merely by way of arousing him to a sense of the social part of his duty.