at the sign
from yet another point of view. Then it reached Shaftesbury Avenue
and stared again. Then it returned to its original station. It was the
figure of Edward Henry Machin, savouring the glorious electric sign of
which he had dreamed. He lit a cigarette, and thought of Seven Sachs
gazing at the name of Seven Sachs in fire on the facade of a Broadway
Theatre in New York. Was not this London phenomenon at least as fine?
He considered it was. The Regent Theatre existed--there it stood!
(What a name for a theatre!) Its windows were all illuminated. Its
entrance-lamps bathed the pavement in light, and in this radiance
stood the commissionaires in their military pride and their new
uniforms. A line of waiting automobiles began a couple of yards to the
north of the main doors and continued round all sorts of dark corners
and up all manner of back streets towards Golden Square itself.
Marrier had had the automobiles counted and had told him the number,
but such was Edward Henry's condition that he had forgotten. A row of
boards reared on the pavement against the walls of the facade said:
"Stalls Full," "Private Boxes Full," "Dress Circle Full," "Upper
Circle Full," "Pit Full," "Gallery Full." And attached to the ironwork
of the glazed entrance canopy was a long board which gave the same
information in terser form: "House Full." The Regent had indeed been
obliged to refuse quite a lot of money on its opening night. After
all, the inauguration of a new theatre was something, even in London!
Important personages had actually begged the privilege of buying seats
at normal prices, and had been refused. Unimportant personages--such
as those whose boast in the universe was that they had never missed
a first night in the West End for twenty, thirty, or even fifty
years--had tried to buy seats at abnormal prices, and had failed:
which was in itself a tragedy. Edward Henry at the final moment had
yielded his wife's stall to the instances of a Minister of the Crown,
and at Lady Woldo's urgent request had put her into Lady Woldo's
private landowner's-box, where also was Miss Elsie April, who "had
already had the pleasure of meeting Mrs. Machin." Edward Henry's first
night was an event of magnitude. And he alone was responsible for it.
His volition alone had brought into being that grand edifice whose
light yellow walls now gleamed in nocturnal mystery under the shimmer
of countless electric bulbs.

"There goes pretty nigh forty t