and meets the wife
he has divorced?'

Hubert remembered the moment referred to, and, with anxious, doubting eyes,
the comedian sought from the author justification for some intonations and
gestures which seemed to him to form part and parcel of the nature of the
man whose drunkenness he had so admirably depicted on his face.

'"_This is most unfortunate, very unlucky--very, my dear Louisa; but----_"

'"_I am no longer obliged to bear with your insults; I can now defend
myself against you._"

[Illustration: "In the third row Harding stood talking to a young man."]

'Now, is that your idea of the scene?'

A pained look came upon Hubert's face. 'Don't question me now, my dear
fellow. I cannot fix my attention. I can see, however, that your make-up is
capital--you are the man himself.'

The actor was satisfied, and in his satisfaction he said, 'I think it will
be all right, old chap.'

Hubert hoped to reach his box without meeting critics or authors. The
serving-maids bowed and smiled,--he was the author of the play. 'They'll
think still more of me if the notices are right,' he thought, as he hurried
upstairs, and from behind the curtain of his box he peeped down and counted
the critics who edged their way down the stalls. Harding stood in the third
row talking to a young man. He said, 'You mean the woman with the black
hair piled into a point, and fastened with a steel circlet. A face of
sheep-like sensuality. Red lips and a round receding chin. A large bosom,
and two thin arms showing beneath the opera cloak, which she has not yet
thrown from her shoulders. I do not know her--_une laideur attirante_. Many
a man might be interested in her. But do you see the woman in the
stage-box? You would not believe it, but she is sixty, and has only just
begun to speak of herself as an old woman. She kept her figure, and had an
admirer when she was fifty-eight.'

'What has become of him?'

'They quarrelled; two years ago he told her he hoped never to see her ugly
old face again. And that delicate little creature in the box next to
her--that pale diaphanous face?'

'With a young man hanging over her whispering in her ear?'

'Yes. She hates the theatre; it gives her neuralgia; but she attends all
the first nights because her one passion is to be made love to in public.
If her admirer did not hang over her in front of the box just as that man
is doing, she would not tolerate him for a week.'

At that moment the conversatio