“Put it plainly—­” began Struthers.

“But don’t you know, it’s no USE putting it plainly,” cried Julia.

“But DO you want to be with Scott, out and out, or DON’T you?” said Lilly.

“Exactly!” chimed Robert.  “That’s the question for you to answer Julia.”

“I WON’T answer it,” she cried.  “Why should I?” And she looked away into the restless hive of the theatre.  She spoke so wildly that she attracted attention.  But it half pleased her.  She stared abstractedly down at the pit.

The men looked at one another in some comic consternation.

“Oh, damn it all!” said the long Jim, rising and stretching himself.  “She’s dead nuts on Scott.  She’s all over him.  She’d have eloped with him weeks ago if it hadn’t been so easy.  She can’t stand it that Robert offers to hand her into the taxi.”

He gave his malevolent grin round the company, then went out.  He did not reappear for the next scene.

“Of course, if she loves Scott—­” began Struthers.

Julia suddenly turned with wild desperation, and cried: 

“I like him tremendously—­tre-men-dous-ly!  He DOES understand.”

“Which we don’t,” said Robert.

Julia smiled her long, odd smile in their faces:  one might almost say she smiled in their teeth.

“What do YOU think, Josephine?” asked Lilly.

Josephine was leaning froward.  She started.  Her tongue went rapidly over her lips.  “Who—?  I—?” she exclaimed.

“Yes.”

“I think Julia should go with Scott,” said Josephine.  “She’ll bother with the idea till she’s done it.  She loves him, really.”

“Of course she does,” cried Robert.

Julia, with her chin resting on her arms, in a position which irritated the neighbouring Lady Cochrane sincerely, was gazing with unseeing eyes down upon the stalls.

“Well then—­” began Struthers.  But the music struck up softly.  They were all rather bored.  Struthers kept on making small, half audible remarks—­which was bad form, and displeased Josephine, the hostess of the evening.

When the curtain came down for the end of the act, the men got up.  Lilly’s wife, Tanny, suddenly appeared.  She had come on after a dinner engagement.

“Would you like tea or anything?” Lilly asked.

The women refused.  The men filtered out on to the crimson and white, curving corridor.  Julia, Josephine and Tanny remained in the box.  Tanny was soon hitched on to the conversation in hand.

“Of course,” she replied, “one can’t decide such a thing like drinking a cup of tea.”

“Of course, one can’t, dear Tanny,” said Julia.

“After all, one doesn’t leave one’s husband every day, to go and live with another man.  Even if one looks on it as an experiment—.”

“It’s difficult!” cried Julia.  “It’s difficult!  I feel they all want to FORCE me to decide.  It’s cruel.”