glasses at the third row in the pit. Not now--not now! It might
be noticed now."

"Who is it?" he asked.

"I don't know--I'm not certain."

The lights in the theatre were put out just as he was about to turn
his head in the direction. He went back to his seat and in five minutes
had forgotten about it.

When that act was over and the lights revived again, Mrs.
Durlacher handed him the glasses. He came to the edge of the box.
Coralie followed him, looking down on the rows of heads below her.

"Look round the house first," Mrs. Durlacher whispered.

He swept the glasses right and left, about the theatre in an
indiscriminate manner--seeing nothing. Then he turned them in the
direction his sister had indicated. From one face to another he
passed along the third row of the pit, seeing only clerks and their
young girls, shop-keepers and their wives. At last he stopped. There
was a girl sitting by herself. Her head was down, her face hidden;
but he recognized her. Then she looked up quickly--straight to the
box--turned direct to his glasses a pair of dark eyes that were
burning, cheeks that were pale, almost unhealthy in the pallor, and
white lips, half-parted to the breaths he could almost hear her
talking.

It was Sally!

Directly she thought that he had seen her, her head lowered guiltily
again. She kept it bent, hidden from him, lifting a programme to
shield her utterly from his gaze.

He put down his glasses on the ledge of the box.

"Do you allow that sort of thing?" Mrs. Durlacher whispered as she
took them up.

"My God--no!" he exclaimed.

She smiled in her mind. That word--allow--was chosen with
discretion.

CHAPTER IX

As the curtain fell Traill proposed supper at a restaurant. They
readily agreed. Mrs. Durlacher, in the best of spirits, thanking
Providence for the weakness of human nature that had driven Sally
to follow Traill to the theatre, still thrilling with the sound of
his exclamation in her ears, would have lit the dullest entertainment
in the world with the humour of her mood. There was a part for her
to play. She played it. All her remarks, bristling with the pointed
satires of spiteful criticism, were a foil to the gentle temper of
Coralie's conversation.

"My God!" said Traill, as they walked down one of the passages to
the _foyer_, and he listened to his sister's verdict upon a woman
who had gone out before them. "Do you women allow a stitch of
respectability to hang on ea