“It was hell!” Eric whispered. “Either she never had a soul, or she’s lost it.”
“Well, my dear boy—”
Eric interrupted him with a mirthless laugh.
“Oh, I’m sure you’re right!,” he cried. “But I wonder if you ever appreciate how little good it sometimes does to be right... I must go, or Lady Maitland will be fuming.”
He jumped up and hurried through the hall and up the stairs. The first name to meet his eyes was “George Oakleigh, Esq.” but the door was mercifully shut and he strode past it and worked his way through an argumentative circle into Lady Maitland’s box. She was sitting with her husband and Ivy, and he was almost glad to be distracted by her reproaches for arriving so late.
“I’ll make up by leaving early,” he suggested. “Age cannot wither the infinite tedium of the fourth act.”
“Oh, you must stay till the end. Maurice and I have to go on to the Poynter’s musical-party; I was depending on you to take Ivy home or at least to find her a taxi.”
“Oh, I’ll stay for that with pleasure,” Eric answered.
The drowsy mutter of slip-shod conversation accelerated and became excitedly clear as the conductor climbed to his place. Eric drew his glasses lazily from their case and swept the boxes on either side of him. George and Barbara must be almost at right-angles; she could see him, if he sat forward; she might be looking at him then, but he dared not focus the glasses on her. Some one in the stalls underneath him drawled: “Hullo! D’you see Babs and George? I wonder when they got back?” Then the lights were lowered, one after another.
Eric tried to lose himself in the music. When that failed, he analyzed the orchestration and concentrated his attention on the conducting. Barbara’s presence made itself felt, and he knew that, for all preoccupation, he was waiting until the stage was dark enough for him to lean forward and steal a glance at her between Lady Maitland’s square grey head and Ivy’s dancing black curls. When he turned slowly and looked at her with all the artificial calm that he could put forth, she was sitting with one arm on the sill of the box, fingering a big fan and watching the stage with rapt enjoyment. He leaned back and closed his eyes.