had not
sought to see her. He had listened then to the delicate tones of her
weak, whispering, thrilling voice, and had expressed regret for Rose
Euclid's plight. But he had done no more. What could he have done?
Clearly he could not have offered money to relieve the plight of Rose
Euclid, who was the cousin of a girl as wealthy and as sympathetic
as Elsie April. To do so would have been to insult Elsie. Yet he felt
guilty, none the less. An odd situation! The delicate tones of Elsie's
weak, whispering, thrilling voice on the scaffolding haunted his
memory, and came back with strange clearness as he sat waiting for the
curtain to ascend.

There was an outburst of sedate applause, and a turning of heads to
the right. Edward Henry looked in that direction. Rose Euclid herself
was bowing from one of the two boxes on the first tier. Instantly she
had been recognized and acknowledged, and the clapping had in no wise
disturbed her. Evidently she accepted it as a matter of course. How
famous, after all, she must be, if such an audience would pay her such
a meed! She was pale, and dressed glitteringly in white. She seemed
younger, more graceful, much more handsome, more in accordance with
her renown. She was at home and at ease up there in the brightness
of publicity. The imposing legend of her long career had survived the
eclipse in the United States. Who could have guessed that some ten
days before she had landed heart-broken and ruined at Tilbury from the
_Minnetonka_?

Edward Henry was impressed.

"She's none so dusty!" he said to himself in the incomprehensible
slang of the Five Towns. The phrase was a high compliment to Rose
Euclid, aged fifty and looking anything you like over thirty. It
measured the extent to which he was impressed.

Yes, he felt guilty. He had to drop his eyes, lest hers should catch
them. He examined guiltily the programme, which announced "The New
Don Juan," a play "in three acts and in verse"--author unnamed. The
curtain went up.

II

And with the rising of the curtain began Edward Henry's torture and
bewilderment. The scene disclosed a cloth upon which was painted, to
the right, a vast writhing purple cuttle-fish whose finer tentacles
were lost above the proscenium arch, and to the left an enormous
crimson oblong patch with a hole in it. He referred to the programme,
which said: "Act II. or A castle in a forest"; and also, "Scenery and
costumes designed by Saracen Givington, A.R.A."