oms," said she. "It used to be a
classroom, I expect, before the Society took the buildings over. You
see the theatre was the general schoolroom."

They sat down unobtrusively in an embrasure. None among the mysterious
moving figures seemed to remark them.

"But why are they talking in the dark?" Edward Henry asked behind his
hand.

"To begin with, it isn't quite dark," she said. "There's the light of
the street-lamp through the window. But it has been found that serious
discussions can be carried on much better without too much light....
I'm not joking." (It was as if in the gloom her ears had caught his
faint sardonic smile.)

Said the voice of one of the figures:

"Can you tell me what is the origin of the decay of realism? Can you
tell me that?"

Suddenly, in the ensuing silence, there was a click, and a tiny
electric lamp shot its beam. The hand which held the lamp was the hand
of Carlo Trent. He flashed it and flashed the trembling ray in the
inquirer's face. Edward Henry recalled Carlo's objection to excessive
electricity in the private drawing-room at Wilkins's.

"Why do you ask such a question?" Carlo Trent challenged the inquirer,
brandishing the lamp. "I ask you why do you ask it?"

The other also drew forth a lamp and, as it were, cocked it and let it
off at the features of Carlo Trent. And thus the two stood, statuesque
and lit, surrounded by shadowy witnessers of the discussion.

The door creaked, and yet another figure, silhouetted for an instant
against the illumination of the stage, descended into the discussion
chamber.

Carlo Trent tripped towards the new-comer, bent with his lamp, lifted
delicately the hem of the new-comer's trousers, and gazed at the
colour of his sock, which was blue.

"All right!" said he.

"The champagne and sandwiches are served," said the new-comer.

"You've not answered me, sir," Carlo Trent faced once more his
opponent in the discussion. "You've not answered me."

Whereupon, the lamps being extinguished, they all filed forth, the
door swung to of its own accord, shutting out the sound of babble
from the stage, and Edward Henry and Elsie April were left silent and
solitary to the sole ray of the street-lamp.

All the Five Towns' shrewdness in Edward Henry's character, all the
husband in him, all the father in him, all the son in him, leapt to
his lips, and tried to say to Elsie:

"Shall _we_ go and inspect the champagne and sandwiches, too?"

And failed