Rodrigo was viewing "The Drifters" an hour later. He found its opening act rather ponderous and talky, until the entrance of Sophie. In the plain tailored suit and subdued make-up which her role called for, she was, he was surprised to discover, more striking in appearance than she had ever been in the tinsel costumes she had worn for Gilbert Christy. Her shiny golden hair, now cropped and confined closely to her head, instead of flying in the breeze as previously, set off her piquant, innocent-wise face in fascinating effectiveness. Her voice had somewhere lost its rasping overtone and acquired clarity and gentility. She moved surely and with an understanding of her part that was in amazing contrast to the slovenly manner in which she had always filled the meager requirements of the bits she had played in Christy's sketches. Formerly Sophie had been able only to sing, dance, and display her figure; now, Rodrigo admitted, she was a real actress. He became interested in discovering how the metamorphosis had come about. His chance came more quickly than he had bargained on.
Just before the curtain rose for the second act, an usher handed Rodrigo a card as he resumed his chair very near the stage. The card read:
Rodrigo:
I noticed you in the audience. I would like to talk with you. Come to my dressing-room after the show, if you care to.
SOPHIE.
It was significant of the change in her, he realized, that later she kept him waiting outside her dressing-room, when he knocked, instead of crying carelessly for him to enter. When she appeared at the door at last, she was dressed simply and becomingly, far more modestly than in the old days. She greeted him cordially enough and accepted his invitation for a bite of supper in a small restaurant just off Piccadilly.
"You are thinner and older," she accused him, when later they were seated cosily in a corner of the smoke-filled and talk-filled room, for the place was a popular rendezvous for after-theatre crowds, though nothing in the way of entertainment was offered except excellent food and a congenial atmosphere.
"You have changed yourself," he retorted. "Tell me how it happened—why you decided to become an actress."
"I think your friend John Dorning had more to do with it than anything," she surprised him by replying.
"John—but how? Do you mean something he said or did the time you—" He stopped in confusion.