His voice was detached from him, but, though it came from an unguessed distance, he could hear that it was steady.
And then it was time for his own question:
“You’ve been on the Riviera, haven’t you?” It was a triumph to meet and overcome “Riviera” without a stammer. “Lucky man! We had the wettest winter on record here... George, I hope it’s not too late to offer you all good wishes. I was in Japan, when I heard about it; I meant to write, but I was suddenly called home to my father and I thought I should arrive before the letter... I crossed with Raney, by the way... Like me, I see you only come for the third act of Louise.”
“Yes, I’m rather tired of the rest. I suppose this means that the second act’s just over.”
Two sluggish streams were trickling out of the stalls and down the stairs, converging by the open doors. Dr. Gaisford, heading the first, looked round, nodded to George and walked over to a sofa, where he perched like a fat, blond idol; it was a perfect opportunity for Eric to break away and join him, but he knew that this first meeting with Barbara must be faced and endured.
She brought her conversation to an end at last and looked round for her husband.
“Oh, how do you do?” she said to Eric.
Even through a glove the touch of her hand was unmistakable. If he did not meet her for twenty years, he could never forget it; if he were blind, he would still know it from any other woman’s. He had kissed it a thousand times, kissed every finger of it; when he was ill and she came to sit with him, it had lain coolly over his eyes, charming him to sleep; at the first night of the “Bomb-Shell”, when the success of the play hung in the balance, he had gripped it until a ring cut into her finger. He wondered how much she remembered, could not help remembering....
“How do you do?”
She smiled as she had smiled in saying good-bye to Mrs. Shelley, with a regrouping of lips and cheeks. It was a smile in which her eyes played no part; they told him nothing. She was as much collected as he knew she would be, equal to every social demand and blankly without emotion. She was neither tender nor hard, neither ashamed nor defiant; and, though she too must have rehearsed this meeting, her eyes looked at him without even curiosity.