Cornelia had dressed with a vivid remembrance of the fact that Captain Guest had never seen her in evening attire, and a determination to secure “a big moment,” for his benefit. When an hour or two later he stood at the entrance to the stalls, and caught sight of her seated in the centre of the front row, it seemed at first sight that she was clad entirely in black, but even as he was applauding the choice for the display of ruddy locks and snowy shoulders, she made a sudden movement, and lo! the black was transformed into vivid, glittering green. Now she was conspicuous—too conspicuous, to please his fastidious taste. He could see opera-glasses levelled on her from the boxes overhead, and over the edge of the dress circle. She sat well forward in her stall, with head thrown back, and eyes fixed upon the stage, in absorbed attention. There was no doubting the unconsciousness of the pose; she was as oblivious of the gaze of others as of his own presence, but he felt an irritated longing to muffle her in veils and wrappings; to lift her up and transplant her to the back seat in a box. What business had those idiots to stare at her, as if she were one of the actresses on the stage? He branded the idiots with even stronger titles, the while he continued to follow their example. Surely it was a forgivable sin to be conspicuously attractive; to stand out, vivid and dazzling, from the surrounding throng, whose chief characteristics seemed to be a bleached inanity, and indifference...
Guest stood in the shadow, his deep-set eyes fixed on the girl with unblinking scrutiny. He remembered that such a gaze was said to demand a response where a certain amount of affinity existed between the people involved, and put out his strength to try the truth of the statement in his own case. The proof came almost startlingly soon. Cornelia’s head turned over her shoulder, and her eyes lightened with a flash of recognition. She smiled at him, nodded her head, and arched her brows, signalling a message, which he could easily divine to be an invitation to come to speak to her between the acts. When the curtain fell, Mr Moffatt made an immediate rush for the door, and Guest took possession of his seat, devoutly thankful that it did not happen to adjoin that of the other lady of the party.
“I’m very pleased to meet you again! Seems quite a good time since we parted,” said Cornelia, gaily. Her hair stood out round her head like a halo of gold, her eyes shone like stars, her cheeks were softly pink. Guest was dazzled by the bizarre beauty of her. She wore no jewels, not so much as a chain round her neck, and the dress by some witchery was black once more, a thin black gauze, heavily jetted. He pointed at it with a curious finger.
“I could have sworn it was green over there! What has happened to turn it into black?”
Cornelia laughed complacently.
“It’s meant to change! There are skirts and skirts: ever so many of them, on top of each other, and each one is different. They all get a chance at times. It’s the vury latest craze. Mrs Moffatt nearly killed me when she saw it.”
“A chameleon effect. I see! Is it supposed to be symbolic?”
“Of me? I guess not! When I’ve made up my mind, I stick! There’s no chopping about for this child!”
It was extraordinary how illusion vanished at the sound of the high-pitched, nasal voice. The fairy princess vanished, and in her place sat a flesh-and-blood damsel, composed, complacent, and matter-of-fact. Guest felt again the intrusion of a jarring note. He would have liked Cornelia to welcome him with a flutter of embarrassment, to have seen her eyes droop before his, and hear a quiver in her voice. He wanted to realise that he was the natural head and protector, and she the woman, the weak, clinging creature, whose happy destiny it was to be the helpmeet of man; but as Cornelia herself would have phrased it, there was “no cling to her.” It seemed ridiculous to think of protection in connection with a creature so jauntily self-satisfied and independent.
He sat by her side until the conclusion of the interval, but the conversation was forced and uninteresting, and he rose to depart with the depressing consciousness that the interview had been a failure, since it left him less in sympathy with Cornelia than he had been in the afternoon.