Before the curtain, and in the high moment of the act, they came for us. Mrs. Dudley liked to go down and give her carriage number early, especially when a supper was on. So we went, and I left him there. I saw him last against the crude setting of a prison, with the music remembering back to what it had been saying long before.
CHAPTER XI
There is nothing more wonderful in the world than the minute when all that you have always been seeing begins to look like something else. It happened to me when I sat down at our table at the Ritz-Carlton, a table which had been reserved for us and was set with orchids and had four waiters, like moons.
I sat between Gerald and Mr. Baddy Dudley.
I looked up at Gerald, and I thought, "You're very kind. I owe you a great deal. But is this the way you are? Were you like this all the time?"
Then I looked up at Mr. Baddy Dudley. I wanted to say to him: "Ugh! You're all locked up in your body, and you can't drop it away. Why didn't you tell me?"
Across the table was Mrs. Dudley, in flesh-pink and pearls. I thought of her dancing, in the leopard skin and the pointed crown; and it seemed to me that she was dead, a long time ago, and here she was, and she didn't dream it herself.
Here and there were the others; they seemed to fill the table with their high voices and their tip-top speech and their strong, big white shoulders. They were so kind—but I wondered if otherwise they had ever been born at all, and what made them think that they had?