"No," Lord Jasper replied. "I don't want to see the damn play. I shall have another drink, and then I shall go to the Empire by myself. You better go back to Cecily and ... and that chap Farlow. She won't notice I'm not there!"
"You'd better come and tell her yourself, hadn't you?" Henry said.
Lord Jasper deliberated with himself for a few moments.
"All right," he said. "I will. I'll come presently. You tell her, will you, that I'll come presently. P'raps you'll change your mind, Quinn, and come with me to the Empire after you've had another dose of this damn play. A chap doesn't want to see a play on a chap's birthday!..."
It occurred to Henry that Lord Jasper Jayne was slightly drunk. He had swallowed the second whisky and soda rather more expeditiously than he had swallowed the first, and no doubt he had dined well. There was a bleary look in his eyes that signified a heated brain....
"My God," Henry said to himself, "that beautiful woman married to this ... this swine!"
"I'm thirty-one to-day, ole f'la," Lord Jasper continued, coming over to Henry and taking hold of his arm. "Thirty-one. I'm getting on in years, ole f'la, that's what I'm doing ... sere and yellow, so to speak ... and a chap my age doesn't want to be bothered with a damn play. He wants something ... something substansl!..." He fumbled over the word "substantial" and then fell on it. "Something substansl," he repeated. "Now, if you come with me!..."
"I say, you mustn't talk so loudly," Henry warned him. "The curtain's gone up, and you'll disturb people...."
"All right, ole f'la, all right. I won't say another word!"
They stumbled along the passages to the door of the box, and entered as quietly as they could.