‘I quite understood you had gone back to New York,’ she said, looking at him, as he stood in front of her, with the upward feminine appealing gesture that men love.

‘What!’ he exclaimed.  ’Without saying good-bye?  No!  And how are you all?  It seems just about a year since I saw you last.’

‘All well, thanks,’ she said, smiling.  ’Won’t you sit here?  It’s John’s seat, but he isn’t coming.’

‘Then you are alone?’ He seemed to apologise for the rest of his sex.

She told him that Uncle Meshach was with her, and would return directly.  When he asked how the opera was going, and she learnt that, being detained at Knype, he had not seen the first act, she was relieved.  He would make the discovery concerning Millicent gradually, and by her side; it was better so, she thought—­less disconcerting.  In a slight pause of their talk she was startled to feel her heart beating like a hammer against her corsage.  Her eyes had brightened.  She conversed rapidly, pleased to be talking, pleased at his sympathetic responsiveness, ignoring the audience, and also forgetting the uneasy preoccupations of her recent solitude.  The men returned from the Tiger and elsewhere, all except Uncle Meshach.  The lights were lowered.  The conductor’s stick curtly demanded silence and attention.  She sank back in her seat.

‘A peremptory conductor!’ remarked Twemlow in a whisper.

‘Yes,’ she laughed.  And this simple exchange of thought, effected, as it were, surreptitiously in the gloom and contrary to the rules, gave her a distinct sensation of joy.

Then began, in Bursley Town Hall, a scene similar to the scenes which have rendered famous the historic stages of European capitals.  The verve and personal charm of a young debutante determined to triumph, and the enthusiasm of an audience proudly conscious that it was making a reputation, reacted upon and intensified each other to such a degree that the atmosphere became electric, delirious, magical.  Not a soul in the auditorium or on the stage but what lived consummately during those minutes—­some creatively, like the conductor and Millicent; some agonised with jealousy, like Florence Gardner and a few of the chorus; one maternally in tumultuous distress of spirit; and the great naive mass yielding with rapture to a sensuous spell.

The outstanding defect in the libretto of Patience is the decentralisation of interest in the second act.  The alert ones who remembered that in that act the heroine has only one song, and certain passages of dialogue not remarkable for dramatic force, had predicted that Millicent would inevitably lose ground as the evening advanced.  They were, however, deceived.  Her delivery of the phrase ’I am miserable beyond description’ brought the house down by its coquettish artificiality; and the renowned ballad, ‘Love is a plaintive song,’ established her unforgettably in the affections of the audience.  Her ‘exit weeping’ was a tremendous stroke, though all knew that she meant them to see that these tears were simply a delightful pretence.  The opera came to a standstill while she responded to an imperative call.  She bowed, laughing, and then, suddenly affecting to cry again, ran off, with the result that she had to return.