"I'm thinking," said he.
"It's going splendidly," she remarked. "Really!... I'm just running
round to the stage-door to meet dear Rose as she comes off. What a
delightful woman your wife is! So pretty, and so sensible!"
She disappeared round the corner before he could compose a suitable
husband's reply to this laudation of a wife.
Then the commissionaires at the entrance seemed to start into life.
And then suddenly several preoccupied men strode rapidly out of the
theatre, buttoning their coats, and vanished phantom-like....
Critics, on their way to destruction!
The performance must be finishing. Hastily he followed in the
direction taken by Elsie April.
V
He was in the wings, on the prompt side. Close by stood the prompter,
an untidy youth with imperfections of teeth, clutching hard at the
red-scored manuscript of "The Orient Pearl." Sundry players, of
varying stellar degrees, were posed around in the opulent costumes
designed by Saracen Givington, A.R.A. Miss Lindop was in the
background, ecstatically happy, her cheeks a race-course of tears.
Afar off, in the centre of the stage, alone, stood Rose Euclid,
gorgeous in green and silver, bowing and bowing and bowing--bowing
before the storm of approval and acclamation that swept from the
auditorium across the footlights. With a sound like that of tearing
silk, or of a gigantic contralto mosquito, the curtain swished down,
and swished up, and swished down again.
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