“Let’s all have dinner,” said Killigrew exuberantly, “and then go on to see the new ballet.  What d’you say, Carminow?”

Carminow was quite willing, his appointment not being till early next morning, and the three went off to the “Cheshire Cheese,” where Killigrew drew portraits of Dr. Johnson on the tablecloth and placated the head-waiter by telling him how famous he, Killigrew, was going to be and how valuable the tablecloth would consequently be in fifty years’ time.  Ishmael enjoyed that dinner.  He was unused to stimulants, but having a naturally good head was delightfully sharpened in sense and appreciation by them, while his stronger stomach did not pay him back next day as Killigrew’s invariably did.  Carminow was full of stories, all, needless to say, of a sanguinary nature; Killigrew capped them, or tried to, by would-be immoral tales of Paris; and Ishmael said very little, but, with his deadly clarity of vision for once working beneficently, sat there aware how young and somehow rather lovable they were through it all, while he himself, whom they were obviously treating as so so much younger in the ways of the world, felt old compared with them.  The only thing he did not fully realise was just how young that feeling itself was.

After dinner they went, as Killigrew had suggested, to the theatre—­a shabby little place to look at, though the resort of all the bloods, who crowded stalls and stage door.  Killigrew laughingly informed Carminow that Ishmael had never met an actress in his life, and in reply to Carminow’s half-mocking commiseration, Ishmael answered gaily that he had never even been to the theatre, except to a penny gaff that once visited Penzance.  It was indeed with a secret tingling that he now found himself seated in a box.  He brought to the theatre the freshness of the child who goes to his first pantomime, and was unashamedly aware of the fact.  The smell of the place, the heat—­for the gas made the air vibrant—­the very tawdriness of the hangings and gilding, all thrilled him, because they were, as Killigrew would have said, so “in the picture.”  When the curtain went up he settled himself to enjoyment.

Killigrew, more interested by the performers than what they represented, leant back in the box and kept up a running commentary in a low voice.  “There never was a more Oriental thing invented than the crinoline,” he observed, nodding towards a group of dancers blowing as lightly as balls of thistledown over the stage, slim ankles twinkling below their inflated skirts of misty whiteness; “I’m not trying to be epigrammatic, I mean it.  Watch those girls there ... did you ever see such sway, such slope—­I can’t find the exact word for it?  Each little movement—­a raised eyebrow seems almost enough—­and the crinoline sways this way and that, divinely true at the waist alone....  But it’s not just their grace; it’s what they suggest.  That feeling of a cage, of something protective, which is what I mean by Oriental.  So defined down to the waist, and then this thing that makes a parade of not following nature....  D’you know, I never watch a pretty woman in a crinoline but the thought doesn’t strike me?”