for her!"

And there were murmurs of approbation.

Rose Euclid gazed at Edward Henry palely and weakly. He considered
her much less effective here than in her box. But her febrile gaze was
effective enough to produce in him the needle-stab again, the feeling
of gloom, of pessimism, of being gradually overtaken by an unseen and
mysterious avenger.

"Yes, indeed!" said he.

He thought to himself: "Now's the time for me to behave like Edward
Henry Machin, and teach these people a thing or two!" But he could
not.

A pretty young girl summoned all her forces to address the great
proprietor of the Regent, to whom, however, she had not been
introduced, and with a charming nervous earnest lisp said:

"But don't you think it's a great play, Mr. Machin?"

"Of course!" he replied, inwardly employing the most fearful and
shocking anathemas.

"We were sure _you_ would!"

The young people glanced at each other with the satisfaction of proved
prophets.

"D'you know that not another manager has taken the trouble to come
here!" said a second earnest young woman.

Edward Henry's self-consciousness was now acute. He would have paid
a ransom to be alone on a desert island in the Indian seas. He looked
downwards, and noticed that all these bright eager persons, women and
men, were wearing blue stockings or socks.

"Miss April is free now," said Marrier in his ear.

The next instant he was talking alone to Elsie in another corner while
the rest of the room respectfully observed.

"So you deigned to come!" said Elsie April. "You did get my card."

A little paint did her no harm, and the accentuation of her eyebrows
and lips and the calculated disorder of her hair were not more than
her powerful effulgent physique could stand. In a costume of green and
silver she was magnificent, overwhelmingly magnificent. Her varying
voice and her glance at once sincere, timid and bold, produced
the most singular sensations behind Edward Henry's soft frilled
shirt-front. And he thought that he had never been through any
experience so disturbing and so fine as just standing in front of her.

"I ought to be saying nice things to her," he reflected. But, no doubt
because he had been born in the Five Towns, he could not formulate in
his mind a single nice thing.

"Well, what do you think of it?" she asked, looking full at him, and
the glance too had a strange significance. It was as if she had said:
"Are you a man, or aren't you?"

"I t