If Freddie Rooke had
been asked at that moment to define happiness in a few words, he would
have replied that it consisted in being several rows away from Lady
Underhill.

The theatre was nearly full when Freddie's party arrived. The
Leicester Theatre had been rented for the season by the newest
theatrical knight, Sir Chester Portwood, who had a large following;
and, whatever might be the fate of the play in the final issue, it
would do at least one night's business. The stalls were ablaze with
jewellery and crackling with starched shirt-fronts; and expensive
scents pervaded the air, putting up a stiff battle with the plebeian
peppermint that emanated from the pit. The boxes were filled, and up
in the gallery grim-faced patrons of the drama, who had paid their
shillings at the door and intended to get a shilling's worth of
entertainment in return, sat and waited stolidly for the curtain to
rise.

The lights shot up beyond the curtain. The house-lights dimmed.
Conversation ceased. The curtain rose. Jill wriggled herself
comfortably into her seat, and slipped her hand into Derek's. She felt
a glow of happiness as it closed over hers. All, she told herself, was
right with the world.

All, that is to say, except the drama which was unfolding on the
stage. It was one of those plays which start wrong and never recover.
By the end of the first ten minutes there had spread through the
theatre that uneasy feeling which comes over the audience at an
opening performance when it realizes that it is going to be bored. A
sort of lethargy had gripped the stalls. The dress-circle was
coughing. Up in the gallery there was grim silence.

Sir Chester Portwood was an actor-manager who had made his reputation
in light comedy of the tea-cup school. His numerous admirers attended
a first night at his theatre in a mood of comfortable anticipation,
assured of something pleasant and frothy with a good deal of bright
dialogue and not too much plot. To-night he seemed to have fallen a
victim to that spirit of ambition which intermittently attacks
actor-managers of his class, expressing itself in an attempt to prove
that, having established themselves securely as light comedians, they
can, like the lady reciter, turn right around and be serious. The one
thing which the London public felt that it was safe from in a Portwood
play was heaviness, and "Tried by Fire" was grievously heavy. It was a
poetic drama, and the audience, though loath to d