her to the Palace, which he told himself would be full of smart people, and decided on the Alhambra Music Hall—­then from the Alhambra he changed to the Holborn Empire....  Really it was annoying of Jo to come out with him looking like this—­she ought to realize that she was not a young girl who could afford to let things slip.  He had told her several times that her hat was on one side, ...  And those big earrings she wore ... she ought to go in for something quieter at her age.  Her get-up had always been too much on the showy side, and she was too independent of those helps to nature which much younger and better-looking women than herself were only too glad to use....  He liked to see a woman take out a powder-puff and flick it over her face in little dainty sweeps....

These reflections did not put him in a good humour for the evening’s entertainment.  They went by ’bus to the Holborn Empire where the first house had already started.  Joanna felt a little repulsed by the big, rowdy audience, smoking and eating oranges and joining in the choruses of the songs.  Her brief experience of the dress circle at Daly’s or the Queen’s had not prepared her for anything so characteristic as an English music-hall, with its half-participating audience.  “Hurrah for Maudie!” as some favourite took the boards to sing, with her shoulders hunched up to the brim of her enormous hat, a heartrending song about her mother.

Joanna watched Bertie as he lounged beside her.  She knew that he was sulking—­the mere fact that he was entertaining her cheaply, by ’bus and music-hall instead of taxi and theatre, pointed to his displeasure.  She wondered if he was enjoying this queer show, which struck her alternately as inexpressibly beautiful and inexpressibly vulgar.  The lovely ladies like big handsome barmaids, who sang serious songs in evening dress and diamonds, apparently in the vicinity of Clapham High Street or the Monument, were merely incomprehensible.  She could not understand what they were doing.  The comedians she found amusing, when they did not shock her—­Bertie had explained to her one or two of the jokes she could not understand.  The “song-scenas” and acrobatic displays filled her with rapture.  She would have liked that sort of thing the whole time....  Albert said it was a dull show, he grumbled at everything, especially the turns Joanna liked.  But gradually the warm, friendly, vulgar atmosphere of the place infected him—­he joined in one or two of the choruses, and seemed almost to forget about Joanna.

She watched him as he leaned back in his seat, singing—­

    “Take me back to Pompeii—­
     To Pompey-ompey-i—­”

In the dim red light of the place, he looked incredibly young.  She could see only his profile—­the backward sweep of glistening, pomaded hair, the little short straight nose, the sensual, fretful lips—­and as she watched him she was smitten with a queer sense of pity.  This was no strong man, no lover and husband—­just a little clerk she was going to shut up in prison—­a little singing clerk.  She felt a brute—­she put out her hand and slid it under his arm, against his warm side.