“How near an approach?” Littlemore responded.
“An unusual kind—an indescribable kind.” Littlemore was not heeding his answer, but presently heard himself appealed to. “I say, I wish very much you’d do me a favour.”
“I did you a favour in coming here,” said Littlemore. “It’s insufferably hot, and the play’s like a dinner that has been dressed by the kitchen-maid. The actors are all doublures.”
“It’s simply to answer me this: is she respectable now?” Waterville demanded, inattentive to his friend’s epigram.
Littlemore gave a groan, without turning his head. “You’re always wanting to know if they’re respectable. What on earth can it matter?”
“I’ve made such mistakes—I’ve lost all confidence,” said poor Waterville, to whom European civilisation had not ceased to be a novelty and who during the last six months had found himself confronted with problems for which his training had little prepared him. Whenever he encountered a very nice-looking woman he was sure to discover that she belonged to the class represented by the heroine of M. Augier’s drama; and whenever his attention rested upon a person of a florid style of attraction there was the strongest probability that she would turn out a countess. The countesses often looked so unnaturally cheap and the others unnaturally expensive. Littlemore distinguished at a glance; he never made mistakes.
“Simply for looking at them it doesn’t matter, I suppose,” Waterville ingenuously sighed.
“You stare at them all alike,” Littlemore went on, still without moving; “except indeed when I tell you they aren’t decent—then your eyes, my dear man, grow as large as saucers.”
“If your judgement’s against this lady I promise never to look at her again. I mean the one in the third box from the passage, in white, with the red flowers,” the younger man said as Littlemore slowly rose and stood beside him. “The fellow with her is leaning forward. It’s he who makes me doubt. Will you have the glass?”
Littlemore looked about him without concentration. “No, thank you, I can see without staring. The young man’s a very good young man,” he presently reported.