Some forty people were standing upon the stage in groups, talking animatedly to each other. In the background were flower-covered tables gleaming with glass and silver and covered with flowers, among which many tiny electric lights were hidden.
Mary Marriott stood in the centre of a laughing happy group of men and women. She wore a long tea-gown of dark red, made of some Indian fabric, and edged with a narrow band of green embroidery upon a biscuit-coloured ground. She wore dark-red roses in the coiled masses of her marvellous black hair, the paint of the theatre had been washed from her face, and her eyes were brighter, her cheeks more lovely, than any art could make them. She was a queen come into her own on that night! An empress of her art, throned, acknowledged, and wonderful.
To her came the duke.
It was a strange and almost symbolic meeting to some of the quick-wits and artists' brains there. Here was a real prince of this world, a prince who had suffered the hours of a keen and bitter attack with fine dignity and chivalry—James Fabian Rose had not spared words—and there was a princess of art, who from nothing had made a more enduring kingdom, a more splendid realm, than even the long line of peers, statesmen, and warriors had bestowed upon the young man before her.
Yet they were both royal, they looked royal, there was an emanation of royalty as the duke bowed over the hand of the actress and touched it with his lips.
"Hommage au vrai Art," he murmured, quoting the words which a king had once used as he kissed the hand of the greatest French actress of his time.
"It was so good of you to come," she said, and he thought that her voice sounded like a flute. "It is kinder still of you to be here now. But they are sitting down to supper. I believe we are placed together; shall we go?"
She took his arm, and his whole being thrilled as the little white hand touched his sleeve and her gracious presence was so near.
They sat down together in the centre of one of the long tables. The duke sat on one side of Mary, James Fabian Rose upon the other.
The waiters began to serve the clear amber consommé in little porcelain bowls; the champagne, cream and amber, flowed into the glasses.