The two following newspapers were more sketchy or descriptive, and referred at some length to Edward Henry’s own speech, with a kind of sub-hint that Edward Henry had better mind what he was about.  Three illustrated papers and photographs of scenes and figures, but nothing important in the matter of criticism.  The rest were “neither one thing nor the other,” as they say in the Five Towns.  On the whole, an inscrutable press, a disconcerting, a startling, an appetite-destroying, but not a hopeless press!

The general impression which he gathered from his perusals was that the author was a pretentious dullard, an absolute criminal, a genius; that the actors and actresses were all splendid and worked hard, though conceivably one or two of them had been set impossible tasks—­to wit, tasks unsuited to their personalities; that he himself was a Napoleon, a temerarious individual, an incomprehensible fellow; and that the future of the intellectual-poetic drama in London was not a topic of burning actuality....  He remembered sadly the superlative-laden descriptions, in those same newspapers, of the theatre itself, a week or two back, the unique theatre in which the occupant of every seat had a complete and uninterrupted view of the whole of the proscenium opening.  Surely that fact alone ought to have ensured proper treatment for him!

Then Nellie woke up and saw the scattered newspapers.

“Well,” she asked, “what do they say?”

“Oh!” he replied lightly, with a laugh.  “Just about what you’d expect.  Of course you know what a first-night audience always is.  Too generous.  And ours was, particularly.  Miss April saw to that.  She had the Azure Society behind her, and she was determined to help Rose Euclid.  However, I should say it was all right—­I should say it was quite all right.  I told you it was a gamble, you know.”

When Nellie, dressing, said that she considered she ought to go back home that day, he offered no objection.  Indeed he rather wanted her to go.  Not that he had a desire to spend the whole of his time at the theatre, unhampered by provincial women in London.  On the contrary, he was aware of a most definite desire not to go to the theatre.  He lay in bed and watched with careless curiosity the rapid processes of Nellie’s toilette.  He had his breakfast on the dressing-table (for he was not at Wilkins’s, neither at the Grand Babylon).  Then he helped her to pack, and finally he accompanied her to Euston, where she kissed him with affectionate common sense and caught the twelve five.  He was relieved that nobody from the Five Towns happened to be going down by that train.