Perceiving that other men smoked, Shelby lit a cigar, and as the plotless play began to unfold its tuneful fooling Mrs. Hilliard forgot to be apprehensive. She observed in the audience another woman with blond hair sipping something from a glass, and wondered if she were missing an opportunity to be cosmopolitan. If so, she deemed it the part of wisdom to remain provincial, for it had not escaped her notice that since dinner her mental processes had undergone some subtle change. For one thing, her sense of humor had quickened. Joe had often maintained she had none. If Joe could see her now! No; that was not her meaning precisely; but at any rate, it had quickened. How every antic of the comedians appealed to her! The excessively tall and the excessively short Germans who talked into one another's teeth; the young person who sang coon songs in a fashion not negro, but all her own; the giant with a boutonniere which a midget mounted a step-ladder to spray; the famous plump beauty whom Shelby whispered she resembled—all the merry-andrew company won her laughter and applause.
Once Shelby laid a restraining hand upon her arm, but she laughed the more. When the curtain fell on the first act and the lights went up, she was laughing still. She wondered why New Yorkers stared so. Perhaps they, like Shelby, who had oddly shrunk into the shadows of the box, thought she resembled the plump beauty for whom cigars were named. She stared back at them collectively, for somehow they seemed to wear one face. It was a thin, clean-shaven face, with keen eyes behind glittering glasses; a familiar face—the face of the editor of the Tuscarora County Whig.
CHAPTER X
"You had better walk to the hotel," Shelby suggested. With the darkening of the theatre for the second act he had piloted his companion to the street. "It's but a little way."
It proved a great way as he contrived it. Striking across town to one of the quieter avenues they paced block after block in the teeth of a wind which smacked of salt. At length Shelby brought their steps to a right about and headed for their destination, just short of which his charge abruptly halted with an hysterical in-take of breath.
"Not yet," she protested. "I can't go in yet. I must think it out here with you. I daren't alone. I'm afraid of something—of myself—I don't know what—"
The man bent a critical glance upon her.
"No; I guess you're not quite fit," he decided. "On we go."
"It's awful! He, of all people!"
"Bad mess."