attention. But it half pleased her. She stared abstractedly down at the
pit.

The men looked at one another in some comic consternation.

"Oh, damn it all!" said the long Jim, rising and stretching himself.
"She's dead nuts on Scott. She's all over him. She'd have eloped with
him weeks ago if it hadn't been so easy. She can't stand it that Robert
offers to hand her into the taxi."

He gave his malevolent grin round the company, then went out. He did not
reappear for the next scene.

"Of course, if she loves Scott--" began Struthers.

Julia suddenly turned with wild desperation, and cried:

"I like him tremendously--tre-men-dous-ly! He DOES understand."

"Which we don't," said Robert.

Julia smiled her long, odd smile in their faces: one might almost say
she smiled in their teeth.

"What do YOU think, Josephine?" asked Lilly.

Josephine was leaning froward. She started. Her tongue went rapidly over
her lips. "Who--? I--?" she exclaimed.

"Yes."

"I think Julia should go with Scott," said Josephine. "She'll bother
with the idea till she's done it. She loves him, really."

"Of course she does," cried Robert.

Julia, with her chin resting on her arms, in a position which irritated
the neighbouring Lady Cochrane sincerely, was gazing with unseeing eyes
down upon the stalls.

"Well then--" began Struthers. But the music struck up softly. They
were all rather bored. Struthers kept on making small, half audible
remarks--which was bad form, and displeased Josephine, the hostess of
the evening.

When the curtain came down for the end of the act, the men got up.
Lilly's wife, Tanny, suddenly appeared. She had come on after a dinner
engagement.

"Would you like tea or anything?" Lilly asked.

The women refused. The men filtered out on to the crimson and white,
curving corridor. Julia, Josephine and Tanny remained in the box. Tanny
was soon hitched on to the conversation in hand.

"Of course," she replied, "one can't decide such a thing like drinking a
cup of tea."

"Of course, one can't, dear Tanny," said Julia.

"After all, one doesn't leave one's husband every day, to go and live
with another man. Even if one looks on it as an experiment--."

"It's difficult!" cried Julia. "It's difficult! I feel they all want to
FORCE me to decide. It's cruel."

"Oh, men with their beastly logic, their either-this-or-that stunt, they
are an awful bore.--But of course, Robert can't love you REALLY, or he'd
want to