She nearly kissed him. A bell sounded.
"Third act!" exclaimed Alston, in his resounding baritone.
Charmian escaped, feeling much more hopeful, indeed almost elated. Alston was right. With eyes like hers how could Enid Mardon anticipate good things?
Nevertheless Charmian remembered that she had called the libretto a masterpiece.
Oh! the agony of these swiftly changing moods! She felt as if she were being tossed from one to another by some cruel giant. She tried to look forward. She said to herself, "Very soon we shall know! All this will be at an end."
But when the third act was finished she felt as if never could there be an end to her acute nervous anxiety. For the third act did not go well. The locusts were all wrong. The lighting did not do. Most of the "effects" missed fire. There were stoppages, there were arguments, there was a row between Miss Mardon and Signor Meroni. Passages were re-tried, chaos seemed to descend upon the stage, engulfing the opera and all who had anything to do with it. Charmian grew cold with despair.
"Thank God Adelaide did go away!" she said to herself at half-past one in the morning.
She turned her head and saw Mrs. Shiffney and Jonson Ramer sitting in the stalls not far from her. Mrs. Shiffney made a friendly gesture, lifting up her right hand. Charmian returned it, and set her teeth.
"What does it matter? I don't care!"
The act ended as it had begun in chaos. In the finale something went all wrong in the orchestra, and the whole thing had to be stopped. Miss Mardon was furious. There was an altercation.