“Faithless,” Beatrice replied.  “She is in the stalls down there with a young man from the box office.  She said you’d understand.”

“A serious affair?” Philip ventured.

Beatrice nodded.

“They are engaged.  I had tea with them yesterday.”

“We shall have to do something for you, Beatrice, soon,” he remarked cheerfully.

A very rare gravity settled for a moment upon her face.

“I wonder, Philip,” she said simply.  “I thought, a little time ago, it would be easy enough to care for the right sort of person.  Perhaps I am not really quite so rotten as I thought I was.  Here comes Elizabeth.  Let’s watch her.”

They both leaned a little forward in the box, Philip in a state of beatific wonder, which turned soon to amazement when, at Elizabeth’s first appearance, the house suddenly rose, and a torrent of applause broke out from the floor to the ceiling.  Elizabeth for a moment seemed dumbfounded.  The fact that the news of what had happened that afternoon could so soon have become public property had not occurred to either her or Philip.  Then a sudden smile of comprehension broke across her face.  With understanding, however, came a momentary embarrassment.  She looked a little pathetically at the great audience, then laughed and glanced at Philip, seated now well back in the box.  Many of them followed her gaze, and the applause broke out again.  Then there was silence.  She paused before she spoke the first words of her part.

“Thank you so much,” she said quietly.

It was a queer little episode.  Beatrice gripped Philip’s hand as she drew her chair back to his.  There were tears in her eyes.

“How they love her, these people!  And fancy their knowing about it, Philip, already!  You ought to have shown yourself as the happy bridegroom.  They were all looking up here.  I wonder why men are so shy.  I’m glad I have my new frock on....  Fancy being married only a few hours ago!  Tell me how you are feeling, can’t you, Philip?  You sit there looking like a sphinx.  You are happy, aren’t you?”

“Happier, I think, than any man has a right to be,” he answered, his eyes watching Elizabeth’s every movement.

As the play proceeded, his silence only deepened.  He went behind at the end of each act and spent a few stolen moments with Elizabeth.  Life was a marvellous thing, indeed.  Every pulse and nerve in his body was tingling with happiness.  And yet, as he lingered for a moment in the vestibule of the theatre, before going back to his box at the commencement of the last act, he felt once more that terrible wave of depression, the ghostly uprising of his old terrors even in this supreme moment.  He looked down from the panorama of flaring sky-signs into the faces of the passers-by along the crowded pavement.  He had a sudden fancy that Dane was there, watching.  His heart beat fiercely as he stood, almost transfixed, scanning eagerly every strange face.  Then the bell rang behind him.  He set his teeth and turned away.  In less than half an hour the play would be over.  They would be on their way home.