The play seemed to a thrilling one as far as we could see; they had just got to a part where the whole company were going to be beheaded.  One of our party felt faint from the heat, and no wonder, so we continued our travels.  We descended a kind of ladder near the door, into the bowels of the earth; and I was glad it was almost pitch dark, because Gaston was just below me and made the greatest fuss of the necessity of putting each of my feet safely on the steps for me; and once towards the bottom I am sure he kissed my instep, but as it might have been a bundle of tow which was sticking out on the last step, brushing against me, I did not like to say anything to him about it.  We crossed some kind of rat hole rooms in utter darkness, and here one respectful brotherly arm, and one passionate, entreprenant one came round my waist!  And while in my right ear the voice of Valerie’s brother said kindly, “I’m obliged to hold on to you or you’ll have an awful fall”—­in my left Gaston was whispering, “Je vous adore, vous savez; n’allez pas si vite!” So I had to be very angry with him, and clung to Valerie’s brother, who toward the end of the evening got into being quite a cousin instead of an aunt or father.

We had been burrowing under the auditorium, and presently found ourselves in a large cellar where a Chinese was cooking on a brazier an unspeakable melange of dog, fish, and rat for the actors’ supper, with not a scrap of ventilation anywhere!!  Finally, up some steps, we emerged behind the scenes, and saw all the performers dressing—­rows of false beards and wonderful garments hanging all around the walls; the most indescribable smell of opium, warm eastern humanity, and grease paint, and no air!  A tiny baby was there being played with by its proud father.  Their lung capacity must be quite different to ours, because if we had not quickly returned I am sure some of us would have fainted.  I felt strangely excited; it had a weird, fierce effect.  What a fatal mysterious nation the Chinese!  Unlike any others on earth.  I did not much care who held me going back.  I only wanted to rush to the open air, and when we had climbed up again and got outside in the street, we all staggered a little and could not speak.

When breath returned, further down the street, we recommenced burrowing into a passage to the opium den, and this was a most wonderful and terrible sight; a room with a stove in it, not more than ten feet square and about eight feet high, no perceptible ventilation but the door, which the detective put his foot in to keep a little open; a raised platform along one side of the place, and on it four Chinamen lying in different stages of the effects of opium.  The first one’s eyes were beginning to glaze, the pipe had fallen from his hand, and he was staring in front of him, and clutching some sheets of paper with Chinese writing on them in one hand, a ghastly smile of extraordinary bliss on his poor thin face.