But no one came, and anger, the sense of desertion, grew in her till she was unable to sit still any longer. She got up, turned, and again looked toward the box in which she had fancied that she saw something move. Now she saw a woman's arm and hand, a bit of a woman's shoulder. Somebody, a woman, wearing sables, was in the box turning round, evidently in conversation with another person who was hidden.
Adelaide Shiffney owned wonderful sables.
Without further hesitation Charmian, driven, made her way to the exit from the stalls on her right, went out and found herself in the blackness of the huge corridor running behind the ground tier boxes. Before leaving the stalls she had tried to locate the box, and thought that she had located it. She meant to go into it without knocking, as one who supposed it to be empty. Now, with a feverish hand she felt for a door-handle. She found one, turned it, and went into an empty box. Standing still in it, she listened and heard a woman's voice that she knew say:
"I dare say. But I don't mean to say anything yet. I have my reputation to take care of, you must remember."
The words ended in a little laugh.
"It is Adelaide. She's in the next box!" said Charmian to herself.
For a moment a horrible idea suggested itself to her. She thought of sitting down very softly and of eavesdropping. But the better part of her at once rebelled against this idea, and without hesitation she slipped out of the box. She stood still in the corridor for three or four minutes. The fact that she had seriously thought of eavesdropping almost frightened her, and she was trying to come to the resolve to abandon her project of interrupting Mrs. Shiffney's conversation with the hidden person who, she felt sure, must be Claude. Presently she walked away a few steps, going toward the entrance. Then she stopped again.
"I have my reputation to take care of, you must remember."
Adelaide Shiffney's words kept passing through her mind. What had Claude said to evoke such words? In the darkness, Charmian, with a strong and excited imagination, conceived Claude faithless to her. She did more. She conceived of triumph and faithlessness coming together into her life, of Claude as a famous man and another woman's lover. "Would you rather he remained obscure and entirely yours?" a voice seemed to say within her. She did not debate this question, but again turned, made her way to Mrs. Shiffney's box, which she located rightly this time, pushed the door and abruptly went into it.
"Hulloh!" said a powerful and rather surprised voice.