When you examined it attentively, the entire audience seemed to resolve itself into an endless repetition of the same small group of two persons of two sexes, each soliciting the other’s favor; a man and a woman sitting close together, the couple, the factorial two—­everywhere, all round the circle, along the three visible rows of stalls, and again in the private boxes.  Those wealthy men in the boxes were unquestionably accompanied by their mistresses and not by their wives or sisters.  Through the vibrating music and the super-heated atmosphere, on a river of vivid light, they were all drifting fast toward the night of love that each pair had arranged for itself.

And they too would have their night of love.  He looked at his wife, and felt his pulses stirred as much now as in the far-off days of courtship—­more, because then there was no experience of facts to strengthen his imagination.  He gently pressed her arm, and thrilled at the mere contact.  She was leaning back, fanning herself with her program, and he observed the roundness and whiteness of her neck, the flesh of her shoulder showing through the transparent sleeve of her blouse, the moistness and warmth of her open lips.

Yet she had told him at Rodchurch Road Station that she was attractive only to his eyes, and that she could never again arouse desire in other men.  What utter nonsense!  She was simply adorable.

VII

They took a cab to drive back in, and he almost carried her up to their bedroom.  It was on the same floor as the other room, with the same marvelous bird’s-eye view of the starlit sky and the lamplit town.  He had got her to himself at last—­here, high above the world, half-way to heaven.  There seemed to him something poetical, almost sublime in their situation:  they two alone, isolated, millions of people surrounding them and no living creature able to interfere with them.

As he knew, they were the only lodgers on this top floor; and so one need not even trouble to avoid making a noise.  He gave full voice to his exultation.

“There, old lady.”  He had opened the window as wide as it would go, and he told her to look out.  “The air—­what there is of it—­will do you good.”

“Oh, I couldn’t,” and she recoiled.

“Giddy?”

“Giddy isn’t the word.  Oh, Will, why did you let me drink that stuff—­after drinking the wine?”

“I thought you’d got a better head-piece.  Look at me.  I could ‘a’ stood two or three more goes at it, and bin none the worse.”  And he chaffed her merrily.  “Here’s a tale—­if it ever leaks out Rodchurch way.  Have you heard how Mrs. Dale behaved up in London?  Went to the theater, and drunk more’n was good for her.  Came out fair squiffy—­so’s poor Mr. Dale, he felt quite disgraced.”

She was not intoxicated in an ugly way; her speech, her movements were unaffected, and yet the alcohol was troubling her brain.  She looked like a child who has been overexercised at a children’s party, and who comes home with eyebrows raised, eyes glowing and yet dull, and cheeks very pale.