te of about a
foot a second, and the drinker waxed enormously in girth. The laughter
grew uproarious. Rachel herself gave a quick, uncontrolled, joyous
laugh, and it was as if the laugh had been drawn out of her violently
unawares. Louis Fores also laughed very heartily.

"Cute idea, that!" he whispered.

When the film was cut off Rachel wanted to take back her laugh. She
felt a little ashamed of having laughed at anything so silly.

"How absurd!" she murmured, trying to be serious.

Nevertheless she was in bliss. She surrendered herself to the joy
of life, as to a new sensation. She was intoxicated, ravished,
bewildered, and quite careless. Perhaps for the first time in her
adult existence she lived without reserve or preoccupation completely
in and for the moment. Moreover the hearty laughter of Louis Fores
helped to restore her dignity. If the spectacle was good enough for
him, with all his knowledge of the world, to laugh at, she need not
blush for its effect on herself. And in another ten seconds, when the
swollen man, staggering along a wide thoroughfare, was run down by
an automobile and squashed flat, while streams of water inundated the
roadway, she burst again into free laughter, and then looked round at
Louis, who at the same instant looked round at her, and they exchanged
an intimate smiling glance. It seemed to Rachel that they were alone
and solitary in the crowded interior, and that they shared exactly the
same tastes and emotions and comprehended one another profoundly and
utterly; her confidence in him, at that instant, was absolute, and
enchanting to her. Half a minute later the emaciated man was in a
room and being ecstatically kissed by a most beautiful and sweetly
shameless girl in a striped shirtwaist; it was a very small room, and
the furniture was close upon the couple, giving the scene an air of
delightful privacy. And then the scene was blotted out and gay music
rose lilting from some unseen cave in front of the screen.

Rachel was rapturously happy. Gazing along the dim rows, she descried
many young couples, without recognizing anybody at all, and most
of these couples were absorbed in each other, and some of the girls
seemed so elegant and alluring in the dusk of the theatre, and some
of the men so fine in their manliness! And the ruby-studded gloom
protected them all, including Rachel and Louis, from the audience at
large.

The screen glowed again. And as it did so Louis gave a start.