ve Towns. On the whole,
an inscrutable press, a disconcerting, a startling, an
appetite-destroying, but not a hopeless press!

The general impression which he gathered from his perusals was that
the author was a pretentious dullard, an absolute criminal, a genius;
that the actors and actresses were all splendid and worked hard,
though conceivably one or two of them had been set impossible
tasks--to wit, tasks unsuited to their personalities; that he himself
was a Napoleon, a temerarious individual, an incomprehensible fellow;
and that the future of the intellectual-poetic drama in London was
not a topic of burning actuality.... He remembered sadly the
superlative-laden descriptions, in those same newspapers, of the
theatre itself, a week or two back, the unique theatre in which the
occupant of every seat had a complete and uninterrupted view of the
whole of the proscenium opening. Surely that fact alone ought to have
ensured proper treatment for him!

Then Nellie woke up and saw the scattered newspapers.

"Well," she asked, "what do they say?"

"Oh!" he replied lightly, with a laugh. "Just about what you'd
expect. Of course you know what a first-night audience always is. Too
generous. And ours was, particularly. Miss April saw to that. She
had the Azure Society behind her, and she was determined to help Rose
Euclid. However, I should say it was all right--I should say it was
quite all right. I told you it was a gamble, you know."

When Nellie, dressing, said that she considered she ought to go back
home that day, he offered no objection. Indeed he rather wanted her
to go. Not that he had a desire to spend the whole of his time at the
theatre, unhampered by provincial women in London. On the contrary, he
was aware of a most definite desire not to go to the theatre. He lay
in bed and watched with careless curiosity the rapid processes of
Nellie's toilette. He had his breakfast on the dressing-table (for he
was not at Wilkins's, neither at the Grand Babylon). Then he helped
her to pack, and finally he accompanied her to Euston, where she
kissed him with affectionate common sense and caught the twelve five.
He was relieved that nobody from the Five Towns happened to be going
down by that train.

As he turned away from the moving carriage the evening papers had just
arrived at the bookstalls. He bought the four chief organs--one green,
one yellowish, one white, one pink--and scanned them self-consciously
on the platf