“I say,” Mr. Prohack summoned him to return.  “I’m rather curious about the methods of you millionaires.  Just when did you sign that cheque for me?  You only lent me the money as we were leaving the hotel.”

“I made it out while I was talking to the mater and Sis in your box, of course.”

“How simple are the acts of genius—­after they’re accomplished!” observed Mr. Prohack.  “Naturally you signed it in the box.”

As he rejoined his family he yawned, surprising himself.  He began to feel a mysterious fatigue.  The effect of the Turkish bath, without doubt!  The remainder of the evening stretched out in front of him, interminably tedious.  The title of the play was misleading.  He could not smack his face.  He wished to heaven he could....  And then, after the play, the ball!  Eliza might tell him to dance with her.  She would be quite capable of such a deed.  And by universal convention her suggestions were the equivalent of demands.  Nobody ever could or would refuse to dance with Eliza....  There she was, all her four limbs superbly displayed, sweetly smiling with her enormous mouth, just as if the relations between Blaggs and herself were those of Paul and Virginia.  The excited audience, in the professional phrase, was “eating” her.

V

Mr. Prohack was really a most absurd person. Smack Your Face, when it came to an end, towards midnight, had established itself as an authentic enormous success; and because Mr. Prohack did not care for it, because it bored him, because he found it vulgar and tedious and expensive, because it tasted in his mouth like a dust-and-ashes sandwich, the fellow actually felt sad; he felt even bitter.  He hated to see the fashionable and splendid audience unwilling to leave the theatre, cheering one super-favourite, five arch-favourites and fifteen favourites, and cheering them again and again, and sending the curtain up and down and up and down time after time.  He could not bear that what he detested should be deliriously admired.  He went so far as to form views about the decadence of the theatre as an institution.  Most of all he was disgusted because his beloved Eve was not disgusted.  Eve said placidly that she did not think much of the affair, but that she had thoroughly enjoyed it and wouldn’t mind coming on the next night to see it afresh.  He said gloomily: 

“And I’ve been bringing you up for nearly twenty-five years.”

As for Sissie, she was quietly and sternly enthusiastic about a lot of the dancing.  She announced her judgment as an expert, and Charlie agreed with her, and there was no appeal, and Mr. Prohack had the air of an ignorant outsider whose opinions were negligible.  Further, he was absurd in that, though he assuredly had no desire whatever to go to the dance, he fretted at the delay in getting there.  Even when they had all got out to the porch of the theatre he exhibited