Henry looked up at her in a puzzled fashion. "What is it he wants?... I beg your pardon, I'm being impertinent!"
"Oh, no!" she replied, smiling graciously at him. "He wants ... oh, he wants everything like that. Haven't you noticed?"
"No," Henry answered, "I haven't."
"Well, you will some day. My motto is, Take what you can get in the way you can get it. It's so much easier to live if you act on that principle!"
"Gilbert's an artist, Lady Cecily, and he can't act on that principle. No artist can. He takes what he wants in the way that he wants it or else he will not take it at all!"
"Exactly. That's what I've been saying. And it's so silly. But never mind. He's young yet, and he'll learn!"
She turned to gaze at the audience, and Henry, not knowing what else to do and having no more to say, looked too. He could think of plenty of fine things to say to her, but he could not get them on to his tongue. He wanted to tell her that he had scarcely heard a word of what was said in the first act of the play because he had filled his mind with thoughts of her, and had spent most of the time in gazing up at her as she sat leaning on the ledge of her box; but when he tried to speak, his mouth seemed to be parched and his tongue would not move.
3
"Do you like this play?" she asked.
"No," he replied.