But the strange thing was—I could not account for it—that after a few minutes I thought her extremely ugly and repellent, for her face seemed to be distorted by malice and envy and hatred and nearly every other bad passion.
Nevertheless she was a general favourite, for not only was she applauded before she did anything, but everything she said, though it was sometimes very silly, was accompanied by a great deal of laughter, and everything she sang, though her voice was no great matter, was followed by a chorus of applause.
Seeing this, and feeling that her appearance had caused a flutter of interest in the box behind me, I laughed and applauded also, in accordance with the plan I had prepared for myself, of sharing my husband's pleasures and entering into his life, although at the bottom of my heart I really thought the joy was not very joyful or the mirth very merry.
This went on for nearly an hour, and then a strange thing happened. I was leaning forward on the velvet barrier of the box in front of me, laughing and clapping my hands with the rest, when all at once I became aware that the lady had wheeled about, and, walking down the stage in the direction of our box, was looking boldly back at me.
I could not at first believe it to be so, and even now I cannot say whether it was something in her face, or something whispered at my back which flashed it upon my mind that this was the woman my husband ought to have married, the woman whose place I had taken, the woman of the foolscap document and the letters in the purple ribbon.
After that I could play my poor little part no longer, and though I continued to lean on the yellow velvet of the barrier in front of me I dropped my eyes as often as that woman was on the stage, and hoped and prayed for the end of the performance.
It came at length with a crash of instruments and voices, and a few minutes afterwards my husband and I were in the cab on our way back to the hotel.
I was choking with mingled anger and shame—anger at my husband for permitting me to come to a place in which I could be exposed to a public affront from his cast-off mistress, shame at the memory of the pitiful scheme for entering into his life which had fallen to such a welter of wreck and ruin.
But my husband himself was only choking with laughter.
"It was as good as a play," he said. "Upon my soul it was! I never saw anything funnier in the whole course of my life."