Rachel was rapturously happy.  Gazing along the dim rows, she descried many young couples, without recognizing anybody at all, and most of these couples were absorbed in each other, and some of the girls seemed so elegant and alluring in the dusk of the theatre, and some of the men so fine in their manliness!  And the ruby-studded gloom protected them all, including Rachel and Louis, from the audience at large.

The screen glowed again.  And as it did so Louis gave a start.

“By Jove!” he said, “I’ve left my stick somewhere.  It must have been at Heath’s.  Yes, it was.  I put it on the counter while I opened this net thing.  Don’t you remember?  You were taking some money out of your purse.”  Louis had a very distinct vision of his Rachel’s agreeably gloved fingers primly unfastening the purse and choosing a shilling from it.

“How annoying!” murmured Rachel feelingly.

“I wouldn’t lose that stick for a five-pound note.” (He had a marvellous way of saying “five-pound note.”) “Would you mind very much if I just slip over and get it, before he shuts?  It’s only across the road, you know.”

There was something in the politeness of the phrase “mind very much” that was irresistible to Rachel.  It caused her to imagine splendid drawing-rooms far beyond her modest level, and the superlative deportment therein of the well-born.

“Not at all!” she replied, with her best affability.  “But will they let you come in again without paying?”

“Oh, I’ll risk that,” he whispered, smiling superiorly.

Then he went, leaving the reticule, and she was alone.

She rearranged the reticule on the seat by her side.  The reticule being already perfectly secure, there was no need for her to touch it, but some nervous movement was necessary to her.  Yet she was less self-conscious than she had been with Louis at her elbow.  She felt, however, a very slight sense of peril—­of the unreality of the plush fauteuil on which she sat, and those rows of vaguely discerned faces on her right; and the reality of distant phenomena such as Mrs. Maldon in bed.  Notwithstanding her strange and ecstatic experiences with Louis Fores that night in the dark, romantic town, the problem of the lost money remained, or ought to have remained, as disturbing as ever.  To ignore it was not to destroy it.  She sat rather tight in her place, increasing her primness, and trying to show by her carriage that she was an adult in full control of all her wise faculties.  She set her lips to judge the film with the cold impartiality of middle age, but they persisted in being the fresh, responsive, mobile lips of a young girl.  They were saying noiselessly:  “He will be back in a moment.  And he will find me sitting here just as he left me.  When I hear him coming I shan’t turn my head to look.  It will be better not.”