He turned from her, sick with disgust.
Sheila felt his aversion, and it choked her when she tried to comfort him. She painted her arms and shoulders white and powdered them till clouds of dust rose from the puff. Pennock made the last hooks fast and Sheila rose for the final primpings of coquetry.
Pennock opened the door of the dressing-room to listen for the cue. When the time came Sheila sighed, ran to Bret, clasped him in a tight embrace, and kissed his wet forehead. Her arms left white streaks across his coat, and her lips red marks on his face.
He followed to watch her make her entrance. She stood a moment between the flats, turned and stared her adoration at him through her viciously leaded eyelashes, and wafted him a sad kiss. Then she caught up her train and began to laugh softly as from a distance. She ran out into the glow of artificial noon, laughing. A faint applause greeted her, the muffled applause of a matinée audience’s gloved hands.
Bret watched her, heard her voice sparkle, heard it greeted with waves of hilarity. He could not realize how broken-hearted she was for him. He could not understand how separate a thing her stage emotions were from her personal feelings.
Good news would not have helped her comedy; bad news could hardly alter it. She went through her well-learned lines and intonations as a first-class soldier does the manual of arms without reference to his love or grief.
All Bret knew was that his wife was out there, laughing and causing laughter, while far away his mother was sobbing—sobbing perhaps above the chill clay of his father.
He hurried from the stage door to pack his trunk. He went cursing the theater, and himself for lingering in its infamous shadow. He did not come back till the play was over and Sheila in her street clothes. In her haste she had overlooked traces of her make-up—that odious blue about the eyes, the pink edging of the ears, the lead on the eyelashes.
Once more Sheila went to the train with her husband. They clung together in fierce farewells, repeated and repeated till the train was moving and the porter must run alongside to help Bret aboard.
When he looked back he could not see Sheila’s pathetic figure and her sad face. When he thought of her he thought of her laughing in her motley. All the next day he thought of her in the theater rehearsing.