“Well done, Madge,” Dicky whispered mischievously, as, after we had been seated, I let my cloak drop from my shoulders without arising.  “You wriggled that off in the most approved manner.”

“I ought to,” I whispered back.  “I’ve watched other women with envious attention during all the lean years, when I wore tailor-mades to mill and to meeting.”

Dicky squeezed my hand under cover of the cloak.  “No more lean years for my girl if I can help it.” he murmured earnestly.

Dicky appeared to know a number of people in the audience.  A half-dozen men and two or three women bowed to him.  He told me about each one.  Two were dramatic critics, others artist and actor friends.  Each one’s name was familiar to me through the newspapers.

“You’ll know them all later, Madge,” he said, and I felt a glow of pleasure in the anticipation of meeting such interesting people.

Dicky opened his program, and I idly watched the people between me and the stage.  A few seats in front of us to the left I caught sight of the woman who had claimed Dicky’s acquaintance in the lobby.  She was signaling greetings to a number of acquaintances in a flamboyant fashion.  She would bow elaborately, then lift her hands together as if shaking hands with the person she greeted.

“Who is she, Dicky?” I tried to make my voice careless.  “I did not catch her name when you introduced us.”

“You’ll probably see enough of her so you won’t forget it,” returned Dicky, grinning.  “She’s one of the busiest little members of the ‘Welcome to Our City Committee’ in the set I train most with.  She won’t rest till you’ve met all the boys and girls and been properly lionized.  She’s one of the best little scouts going, and, if she’d cut out the war paint and modulate that Comanche yell she calls her voice there would be few women to equal her for brains or looks.”

“But you haven’t told me yet what her name is,” I persisted.

“Well, in private life she’s Mrs. Harry Underwood—­that’s Harry with her—­but she’s better known all over the country as the cleverest producer of illustrated jingles for advertising we have.  Remember that Simple Simon parody for the mincemeat advertisement we laughed over some time ago, and I told you I knew the woman who did it?  There she is before you,” and Dicky waved his hand grandiloquently.

“Lillian Gale!” I almost gasped the name.

“The same,” rejoined Dicky, and turned again to his program, while I sat in amazed horror, with all my oldtime theories crumbling around me.

For I had read of Lillian Gale and her married troubles.  I knew that Harry Underwood was her second husband and that she had been divorced from her first spouse after a scandal which has been aired quite fully in the newspapers.  She had not been proved guilty, but her skirts certainly had been smirched by rumor.  According to the ideas which had been mine, Dicky should have shrunk from having me ever meet such a woman, let alone planning to have me on terms of intimacy with her.