'Now, is that your idea of the scene?'
A pained look came upon Hubert's face. 'Don't question me now, my dear fellow. I cannot fix my attention. I can see, however, that your make-up is capital—you are the man himself.'
The actor was satisfied, and in his satisfaction he said, 'I think it will be all right, old chap.'
Hubert hoped to reach his box without meeting critics or authors. The serving-maids bowed and smiled,—he was the author of the play. 'They'll think still more of me if the notices are right,' he thought, as he hurried upstairs, and from behind the curtain of his box he peeped down and counted the critics who edged their way down the stalls. Harding stood in the third row talking to a young man. He said, 'You mean the woman with the black hair piled into a point, and fastened with a steel circlet. A face of sheep-like sensuality. Red lips and a round receding chin. A large bosom, and two thin arms showing beneath the opera cloak, which she has not yet thrown from her shoulders. I do not know her—une laideur attirante. Many a man might be interested in her. But do you see the woman in the stage-box? You would not believe it, but she is sixty, and has only just begun to speak of herself as an old woman. She kept her figure, and had an admirer when she was fifty-eight.'
'What has become of him?'
'They quarrelled; two years ago he told her he hoped never to see her ugly old face again. And that delicate little creature in the box next to her—that pale diaphanous face?'
'With a young man hanging over her whispering in her ear?'
'Yes. She hates the theatre; it gives her neuralgia; but she attends all the first nights because her one passion is to be made love to in public. If her admirer did not hang over her in front of the box just as that man is doing, she would not tolerate him for a week.'