Esther said “Yes––yes” twice in nervous hurry.
There was something strained and unnatural about her, 172 and though Micky could not see her face clearly he knew that something had happened to distress her.
“What is it?” he asked anxiously. “Is anything the matter?”
She shook her head.
“No.... No.”
She sat very still till the curtain fell again, but Micky had the feeling that she was not paying the least attention to what was going on on the stage, and he knew that her eyes turned again and again to the stage box. What was she afraid of, he asked himself in perplexity, even if Mrs. Ashton did see her and recognize her, surely––then in a flash he knew ... the light had been turned up suddenly, and in that moment he saw the figure of a man move quickly from the front of the box to the screen of the curtains.
Micky gripped the arms of his seat; for the moment he could not move.
It was Raymond––he knew it as certainly as if he had been told.
No doubt he had seen Esther, whilst she ... poor child! Had she seen him too?
He looked down at her; she was sitting up stiffly, her hands clasped in the lap of the new frock of which she had been so innocently proud; her face was as white as the soft tulle of her sleeves, and her eyes were fixed on the box with its velvet curtains where Mrs. Ashton sat laughing and chatting with a girl in a pink frock.