, a little anxiously.

"It seems quite good," John replied cheerfully. "Some very clever lines,
and all that sort of thing; but I can't quite see what it's all leading
to."

Sophy peered around the house from behind the curtain.

"There isn't standing-room anywhere," she declared. "I don't suppose
there ever was a play in London that was more talked about; and then
putting it off for more than three months--why, there have been all
sorts of rumors about. Do you want to know who the people in the
audience are?"

"Not particularly," John answered. "I shouldn't know them, if you told
me. There are just a few familiar faces. I see the prince in the box
opposite."

"Did you telephone to Louise to-day?" Sophy asked.

John shook his head.

"No. I thought it better to leave her alone until after to-night."

"You are going to the supper, of course?"

"I have been asked," John replied, a little doubtfully. "I don't quite
know whether I want to. Is it being given by the prince or by the
management?"

"The management," Sophy assured him. "Do come and take me! It's going to
be rather fun."

The curtain went up upon the second act. John, from the shadows of the
box, listened attentively. The subject was not a particularly new one,
but the writing was brilliant. There was the old _Marquis de Guy_, a
roue, a degenerate, but still overbearing and full of personality, from
whose lips came some of Graillot's most brilliant sayings; Louise, his
wife; and Faraday, a friend of the old marquis, and obviously the
intended lover of his wife.

"I don't see anything so terrible in this," John remarked, as the
curtain went down once more and thunders of applause greeted some
wonderful lines of Graillot's.

"It's wonderful!" Sophy declared. "Try and bear the thread of it all in
your mind. For two acts you have been asked to focus your attention upon
the increasing brutality of the marquis. Remember that, won't you?"

"Not likely to forget it," John replied. "How well they all act!"

There was a quarter of an hour's interval before the curtain rose again.
Rumors concerning the last act had been floating about for weeks, and
the house was almost tense with excitement as the curtain went up. The
scene was the country _chateau_ of the _Marquis de Guy_, who brought a
noisy crowd of companions from Paris without any warning. His wife
showed signs of dismay at his coming. He had brought with him women whom
she declined to receive.

T