“Don’t; I wouldn’t—” began Gethryn, but he was too late.
Yvonne leaned across the gilded cornice and instantly fell back in her chair, deathly pale.
“My God! Are you ill, Yvonne?”
“Oh, Rex, Rex, take me away—home—”
Then came a loud hammering on the box door. A harsh, strident voice called, “Yvonne! Yvonne!”
Clifford thoughtlessly threw it open, and a woman in evening dress, very decolletée, swept by him into the box, with a waft of sickly scented air.
Yvonne leaned heavily on Gethryn’s shoulder; the woman stopped in front of them.
“Ah! here you are, then!”
Yvonne’s face was ghastly.
“Nina,” she whispered, “why did you come?”