Tavernake passed through the scattered knot of loiterers at the door and bought a seat for himself in the little music-hall, which, notwithstanding the professor’s boast, was none too well filled.  It was a place of the old-fashioned sort, with small tables in the front, and waiters hurrying about serving drinks.  The people were of the lowest order, and the atmosphere of the room was thick with tobacco smoke.  A young woman in a flaxen wig and boy’s clothes was singing a popular ditty, marching up and down the stage, and interspersing the words o f her song with grimaces and appropriate action.  Tavernake sat down with a barely-smothered groan.  He was beginning to realize the tragedy upon which he had stumbled.  A comic singer followed, who in a dress suit several sizes too large for him gave an imitation of a popular Irish comedian.  Then the curtain went up and the professor was seen, standing in front of the curtain and bowing solemnly to a somewhat unresponsive audience.  A minute later Beatrice came quietly in and sat by his side.  There was nothing new about the show.  Tavernake had seen the same thing before, with the exception that the professor was perhaps a little behind the majority of his fellow-craftsmen.  The performance was finished in dead silence, and after it was over, Beatrice came to the front and sang.  She was a very unusual figure in such a place, in a plain black evening gown, with black gloves and no jewelry, but they encored her heartily, and she sang a song from the musical comedy in which Tavernake had first seen her.  A sudden wave of reminiscence stirred within him.  His thoughts seemed to go back to the night when he had waited for her outside the theatre and they had had supper at Imano’s, to the day when he had left the boarding-house and entered upon his new life.  It was more like a dream than ever now.

He rose and quitted the place immediately she had finished, waiting in the street until she appeared.  She came out in a few minutes.

“Father is going to a supper,” she announced, “at the inn where he has a room for receiving people.  Will you come home with me for an hour?  Then we can go round and fetch him.”

“I should like to,” Tavernake answered.

Her lodgings were only a few steps away—­a strange little house in a narrow street.  She opened the front door and ushered him in.

“You understand, of course,” she said, smiling, “that we have abandoned the haunts of luxury altogether.”

He looked around at the tiny room with its struggling fire and horsehair sofa, linoleum for carpet, oleographs for pictures, and he shivered, not for his own sake but for hers.  On the sideboard were some bread and cheese and a bottle of ginger beer.

“Please imagine,” she begged, taking the pins from her hat, “that you are in those dear comfortable rooms of ours down at Chelsea.  Draw that easy-chair up to what there is of the fire, and listen.  You smoke still?”