He bent towards her in quick response and answered in a whisper.

She laughed and replied in an equally low tone.

Loder, to whom both remarks had been inaudible dropped into the vacant seat beside Mary Esseltyn.  He had the unsettled feeling that things were not falling out exactly as he had calculated.

“What is the play like?” he hazarded as he looked towards his companion.  At all times social trivialities bored him; to-night they were intolerable.  He had come to fight, but all at once it seemed that there was no opponent.  Lillian’s attitude disturbed him; her careless graciousness, her evident ignoring of him for Kaine, might mean nothing—­but also it might mean much.

So he speculated as he put his question and spurred his attention towards the girl’s answer; but with the speculation came the resolve to hold his own—­to meet his enemy upon whatever ground she chose to appropriate.

The girl looked at him with interest.  She, too, had heard of his triumph.

“It is a good play,” she responded.  “I like it better than the book.  You’ve read the book, of course?”

“No.”  Loder tried hard to fix his thoughts.

“It’s amusing—­but far-fetched.”

“Indeed?” He picked up the programme lying on the edge of the box.  His ears were strained to catch the tone of Lillian’s voice as she laughed and whispered with Kaine.

“Yes; men exchanging identities, you know.”

He looked up and caught the girl’s self-possessed glance.  “Oh?” he said.  “Indeed?” Then again he looked away.  It was intolerable this feeling of being caged up!  A sense of anger crept through his mind.  It almost seemed that Lillian had brought him there to prove that she had finished with him—­had cast him aside, having used him for the day’s excitement as she had used her poodles, her Persian cats, her crystal-gazing.  All at once the impotency and uncertainty of his position goaded him.  Turning swiftly in his seat, he glanced back to where she sat, slowly swaying her fan, her pale, golden hair and her pale-colored gown delicately silhouetted against the background of the box.

“What’s your idea of the play, Lillian?” he said, abruptly.  To his own ears there was a note of challenge in his voice.

She looked round languidly.  “Oh, it’s quite amusing,” she said.  “It makes a delicious farce—­absolutely French.”

“French?”

“Quite.  Don’t you think so, Lennie?”

“Oh, quite,” Kaine agreed.

“They mean that it’s so very light—­and yet so very subtle, Mr. Chilcote,” Mary Esseltyn explained.

“Indeed?” he said.  “Then my imagination was at fault.  I thought the piece was serious.”

“Serious!” Lillian smiled again.  “Why, where’s your sense of humor?  The motive of the play debars all seriousness.”

Loder looked down at the programme still between his hands.  “What is the motive?” he asked.