That’s what scared me.’

It scared her too, to the point of blanching her habitually lifeless cheek. She continued to scrutinize her husband broodingly. ‘You look fairly sick, Abner. You better let me get you some of those stomach-drops right off,’ she proposed.

But he parried this with his unfailing humour. ‘I guess I’m too sick to risk that.’ He passed his hand through her arm with the conjugal gesture familiar to Apex City. ‘Come along down to dinner, mother – I guess Undine won’t mind if I don’t rig up tonight.’

V

SHE HAD looked down at them, enviously, from the balcony – she had looked up at them, reverentially, from the stalls; but now at last she was on a line with them, among them, she was part of the sacred semi-circle whose privilege it is, between the acts, to make the mere public forget that the curtain has fallen.

As she swept to the left-hand seat of their crimson niche, waving Mabel Lipscomb to the opposite corner with a gesture learned during her apprenticeship in the stalls, Undine felt that quickening of the faculties that comes in the high moments of life. Her consciousness seemed to take in at once the whole bright curve of the auditorium, from the unbroken lines of spectators below her to the culminating blaze of the central chandelier; and she herself was the core of that vast illumination, the sentient throbbing surface which gathered all the shafts of light into a centre.

It was almost a relief when, a moment later, the lights sank, the curtain rose, and the focus of illumination was shifted. The music, the scenery, and the movement on the stage, were like a rich mist tempering the radiance that shot on her from every side, and giving her time to subside, draw breath, adjust herself to this new clear medium which made her feel so oddly brittle and transparent.

When the curtain fell on the first act she began to be aware of a subtle change in the house. In all the boxes cross-currents of movement had set in: groups were coalescing and breaking up, fans waving and heads twinkling, black coats emerging among white shoulders, late comers dropping their furs and laces in the red penumbra of the background. Undine, for the moment unconscious of herself, swept the house with her opera-glass, searching for familiar faces. Some she knew without being able to name them – fixed figure-heads of the social prow – others she recognized from their portraits in the papers; but of the few from whom she could herself claim recognition not one was visible, and as she pursued her investigations the whole scene grew blank and featureless.

Almost all the boxes were full now, but one, just opposite, tantalized her by its continued emptiness. How queer to have an opera-box and not use it! What on earth could the people be doing – what rarer delight could they be tasting? Undine remembered that the numbers of the boxes and the names of their owners were given on the back of the programme, and after a rapid computation she turned to consult the list. Mondays and Fridays, Mrs Peter Van Degen. That was it: the box was empty because Mrs Van Degen was dining alone with Ralph Marvell! ‘Peter will be at one of his club dinners.’ Undine had a sharp vision of the Van Degen dining-room – she pictured it as oak-carved and sumptuous with gilding – with a small table in the centre, and rosy lights and flowers, and Ralph Marvell, across the hot-house grapes and champagne, leaning to take a light from his hostess’s cigarette. Undine had seen such scenes on the stage, she had come upon them in the glowing pages of fiction, and it seemed to her that every detail was before her now, from the glitter of jewels on Mrs Van Degen’s bare shoulders to the way young Marvell stroked his slight blond moustache while he smiled and listened.

Undine blushed with anger at her own simplicity in fancying that he had been ‘taken’ by her – that she could ever really count among these happy self-absorbed people! They all had their friends, their ties, their delightful crowding obligations: why should they make room for an intruder in a circle so packed with the initiated?

As her imagination developed the details of the scene in the Van Degen dining-room it became clear to her that fashionable society was horribly immoral and that she could never really be happy in such a poisoned atmosphere. She remembered that an eminent divine was preaching a series of sermons against Social Corruption, and she determined to go and hear him on the following Sunday.

This train of thought was interrupted by the feeling that she was being intently observed from the neighbouring box. She turned around with a feint of speaking to Mrs Lipscomb, and met the bulging stare of Peter Van Degen. He was standing behind the lady of the eye-glass, who had replaced her tortoise-shell implement by one of closely set brilliants, which, at a word from her companion, she critically bent on Undine.

‘No – I don’t remember,’ she said; and the girl reddened, divining herself unidentified after this protracted scrutiny.

But there was no doubt as to young Van Degen’s remembering her. She was even conscious that he was trying to provoke in her some reciprocal sign of recognition; and the attempt drove her to the haughty study of her programme.

‘Why, there’s Mr Popple over there!’ exclaimed Mabel Lipscomb, making large signs across the house with fan and playbill.

Undine had already become aware that Mabel, planted, blonde and brimming, too near the edge of the box, was somehow out of scale and out of drawing; and the freedom of her demonstrations increased the effect of disproportion. No one else was wagging and waving in that way: a gesture-less mute telegraphy seemed to pass between the other boxes. Still, Undine could not help following Mrs Lipscomb’s glance, and there in fact was Claud Popple, taller and more dominant than ever, and bending easily over what she felt must be the back of a brilliant woman.

He replied by a discreet salute to Mrs Lipscomb’s intemperate motions, and Undine saw the brilliant woman’s opera-glass turn in their direction, and said to herself that in a moment Mr Popple would be ’round’. But the entr’acte wore on, and no one turned the handle of their door, or disturbed the peaceful somnolence of Harry Lipscomb, who, not being (as he put it) ‘on to’ grand opera, had abandoned the struggle and withdrawn to the seclusion of the inner box. Undine jealously watched Mr Popple’s progress from box to box, from brilliant woman to brilliant woman; but just as it seemed about to carry him to their door he reappeared at his original post across the house.

‘Undie, do look – there’s Mr Marvell!’ Mabel began again, with another conspicuous outbreak of signalling; and this time Undine flushed to the nape as Mrs Peter Van Degen appeared in the opposite box with Ralph Marvell behind her. The two seemed to be alone in the box – as they had doubtless been alone all the evening! – and Undine furtively turned to see if Mr Van Degen shared her disapproval. But Mr Van Degen had disappeared, and Undine, leaning forward, nervously touched Mabel’s arm.

‘What’s the matter, Undine? Don’t you see Mr Marvell over there? Is that his sister he’s with?’

‘No. – I wouldn’t beckon like that,’ Undine whispered between her teeth.

‘Why not? Don’t you want him to know you’re here?’

‘Yes – but the other people are not beckoning.’

Mabel looked about unabashed. ‘Perhaps they’ve all found each other. Shall I send Harry over to tell him?’ she shouted above the blare of the wind instruments.

‘No!’ gasped Undine as the curtain rose.

She was no longer capable of following the action on the stage. Two presences possessed her imagination: that of Ralph Marvell, small, unattainable, remote, and that of Mabel Lipscomb, near-by, immense and irrepressible.

It had become clear to Undine that Mabel Lipscomb was ridiculous. That was the reason why Popple did not come to the box.