“Take her to a music hall, make her dead-drunk—anything for a distraction. The theater for a compromise. I can pass you into the Adelphi. There is a splendid melodrama on there. Something exciting.”
I had expected opposition, but, queerly enough, she jumped at the idea. She dressed herself very smartly; I think her face was rouged. She kept laughing as we jolted to the Strand in a cab.
In the second act there was a row between two men, and one stabbed the other to the heart. It was most unlucky. Barbara was staring up at the dress circle. She turned to me suddenly, her cheeks and eyes blazing. She got up and slipped on her cloak, pulling the hood well over her head before she was out of doors. When I rose too she made a quick, excited gesture, and whispered:
“Don’t follow. Whatever you do, don’t follow.”
I let her go out quietly alone. When I happened to look up at the dress circle I saw a vacant seat.
When one man on the stage stabbed the other, Barbara naturally turned her head away. She happened to look up at the dress circle, and her eyes fixed on a family party in the front row. It was Stapley, the girl he was engaged to, and her mother.
Barbara was struck by the look on his face. He seemed as much moved by that murder on the stage as she was. He looked a guilty man, a terrified man. His face was the face of a corpse; his eyes were the eyes of a corpse—some corpse whose last impression had been one of fearful horror.
Presently he rose, whispered a word or two to his companions, and went away. At the same moment Barbara slipped up from her seat in the stalls.
She followed him out of the theater, along the brilliant whirl of the Strand, through dirty little streets to Holborn, across the road, under the gateway, and into the Inn. The square was quiet. The trees waved troublously. There were peep-holes of bright light at men’s windows, and once she heard a loud peal of laughter.
Stapley turned in at No. 7.