s
no affair of mine, but I've worked in a good many theatres, and I do
think it's such a mistake to have the dress-rehearsal quite private.
If you get a hundred or so people in the stalls then it's an audience,
and there's much less delay and everything goes much better. But when
it's private a dress-rehearsal is just like any other rehearsal."

"Only more so--perhaps," said Edward Henry, smiling.

He saw that he had made her happy; but he saw also that he had given
her empire over him.

"I've got your tea here," she said, rather like a hospital-nurse now.
"Won't you drink it?"

"I'll drink it if it's not stewed," he muttered.

"Oh!" she protested, "of course it isn't! I poured it off the leaves
into another teapot before I brought it up."

She went behind the barrier, and reappeared balancing a cup of tea
with a slice of sultana cake edged on to the saucer. And as she handed
it to him--the sustenance of rehearsals--she gazed at him and he could
almost hear her eyes saying: "You poor thing!"

There was nothing that he hated so much as to be pitied.

"You go home!" he commanded.

"Oh, but--"

"You go home! See?" He paused, threatening. "If you don't clear out on
the tick I'll chuck this cup and saucer down into the stalls."

Horrified, she vanished.

He sighed his relief.

After some time the leader of the orchestra climbed into his chair,
and the orchestra began to play, and the curtain went up again, on the
second act of the masterpiece in hexameters. The new scenery, which
Edward Henry had with extraordinary courage insisted on Saracen
Givington substituting for the original incomprehensibilities
displayed at the Azure Society's performance, rather pleased him. Its
colouring was agreeable, and it did resemble something definite. You
could, though perhaps not easily, tell what it was meant to represent.
The play proceeded, and the general effect was surprisingly pleasant
to Edward Henry. And then Rose Euclid as Haidee came on for the great
scene of the act. From the distance of the gallery she looked quite
passably youthful, and beyond question she had a dominating presence
in her resplendent costume. She was incomparably and amazingly better
than she had been at the few previous rehearsals which Edward Henry
had been unfortunate enough to witness. She even reminded him of his
earliest entrancing vision of her.

"Some people may _like_ this!" he admitted, with a gleam of optimism.
Hitherto, for weeks