He was about to turn away also, not particularly relishing the remaining company, when, with a rush, Poppy was beside him, in stately garments of black velvet and glimmering tissue of silver; her head and shoulders draped with something of daring and magnificence, in her blue-purple jewelled dragon-embroidered scarf. She caught Iglesias' right hand in both of hers and held it a moment against her breast. And during that brief interval he registered the fact that, notwithstanding her beauty, the force of her personality and richness of her dress, she did not look out of place in this somewhat cut-throat alley, with the questionable sights and sounds of midnight London all about her; but vivid, exultant, true daughter of great cities, fearless manipulator of the very varied opportunities they offer, past-master, for joy and sorrow, in the curious arts they teach.
"Get into the brougham, dear man," she said, "and let me talk. There, put up the window on the traffic side. I have been in the liveliest worry about you. Had the house turned out of windows to find you—and gave things in general the deuce of a time.—The brougham's comfortable, isn't it? Fallowfeild's jobbed it for the winter for me.—All the same I played like an angel, out of pure desperation, thinking you might be ill. I made the audience cry big, big tears, bless 'em. And it wasn't the part—not a bit of it. It was you, just simply you.—And then I dawdled talking to Antony Hammond about some lines in the second act I want altered, so as to let myself down easy before digesting the disappointment of driving back to Bletchworth Mansions alone. I wanted so very badly to have you see me. Beloved and most faithless of beings, why the mischief didn't you come?"
And Iglesias sitting beside her watching her joyous face, crowned by her dark hair, set in the gleaming folds of her jewelled scarf, as passing lights revealed it clearly, or shifting left it in soft shadow, divined rather than actually seen, became sadly conscious that the problems which oppressed him were not only hard of solution but hard of statement likewise. It seemed heartless to propound them in this, her hour of success. Yet, unless he was deeply mistaken, the statement of them must tell for emancipation and relief in the end.
"The play has gone well, and you are happy?" he asked her.
"Gorgeously—I grant you I was a bit nervous as to whether during these years of—well—love in idleness, I had not lost touch with my art. But I haven't. I have only matured in mind and in method. I am not conceited, dear man, truly I am not; but I am neither too lazy nor too modest to use my brains. What I know I am not afraid to apply. I've very little theory, but a precious deal of practice—and that's the way to get on. Don't talk about your ideas—just use them for all you're worth.—But this is beside the mark. You're trying to head me off. Why didn't you come?"
"I would gladly have come," Iglesias answered. "My disappointment has been quite as great as yours."
"Bless your heart!" Poppy murmured under her breath.
"But it was impossible for me to come. I was detained until it was too late." He paused, uncertain how best to say that which had to be said.
"Oh! fiddle!" Poppy cried, with a lift of her head. "I stand first. You ought not to have let yourself be detained. After all, it's not every day someone you know blazes from a farthing dip into a star of the first magnitude. You might very well have crowded other things aside. I feel a trifle hurt, dear man, really I do."
"Believe me, no ordinary matter would have prevented my coming," Iglesias answered. To his relief the carriage just then turned into the comparative peace of Langham Place. It became possible to speak softly. "There was a death in the house last night," he went on, "that of a person with whom I have been rather closely associated. He died under circumstances demanding investigations of a distressing character. No one save myself was qualified, or perhaps willing, to assume the responsibility of calling in the authorities."