Seven Sachs.
"Not much elbow-room here!" he said lightly. He was very anxious to be
equal to the occasion.
She gazed at him under her emphasized eyebrows. He noticed that there
were little touches of red on her delightful nostrils.
"No," she answered with direct simplicity. "Suppose we try somewhere
else?"
She turned her back on all the amiable and intellectual babble,
descended three steps on the prompt side, and opened a door. The swish
of her brocaded spreading skirt was loud and sensuous. He followed her
into an obscure chamber in which several figures were moving to and
fro and talking.
"What's this place?" he asked. Involuntarily his voice was diminished
to a whisper.
"It's one of the discussion-rooms," said she. "It used to be a
classroom, I expect, before the Society took the buildings over. You
see the theatre was the general schoolroom."
They sat down unobtrusively in an embrasure. None among the mysterious
moving figures seemed to remark them.
"But why are they talking in the dark?" Edward Henry asked behind his
hand.
"To begin with, it isn't quite dark," she said. "There's the light of
the street-lamp through the window. But it has been found that serious
discussions can be carried on much better without too much light....
I'm not joking." (It was as if in the gloom her ears had caught his
faint sardonic smile.
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