went up. And after it went up he kept his chair very close
to hers, sat almost "in her pocket," and occasionally murmured to her
remarks about the play.

The last act was a panorama of shifting moods, and although there
was little action they all followed it with an intense interest
which afterwards surprised them. But a master hand was playing on the
audience, and drew at will from them what emotions he chose. Now and
then, during the progress of this act, Braybrooke sent an anxious glance
to Lady Sellingworth. All this about loss, though it was the loss of
a voice, about the end of a great career, about age and desertion, was
dangerous ground. The love-scene between Moscovitch and the young girl
seriously perturbed Braybrooke. He hoped, he sincerely hoped, that Adela
Sellingworth would not be upset, would not think that he had chosen the
Shaftesbury Theatre for their place of entertainment with any _arriere
pensee_. He fancied that her face began to look rather hard and "set" as
the act drew near its end. But he was not sure. For the auditorium was
rather dark; he could not see her quite clearly. And he looked at Craven
and Miss Van Tuyn and thought, rather bitterly, how sane and how right
his intentions had been. Youth should mate with youth. It was not
natural for mature, or old, age to be closely allied with youth in any
passionate bond. In such a bond youth was at a manifest disadvantage.
And it seemed to Braybrooke that age was sometimes, too often indeed, a
vampire going about to satisfy its appetite on youth, to slake its sad
thirst at the well-spring of youth. He looked, too, at the women in the
box opposite, and at the young men with them, and he regretted that
so many human beings were at grips with the natural. He at any rate,
although he carefully concealed his age, never did unsuitable things, or
fell into anything undignified. Yet was he rewarded for his intense and
unremitting carefulness in life?

A telephone bell sounded on the stage, and the unhappy singer, bereft of
romance, his career finished, decadence and old age staring him in
the face, went to answer the call. But suddenly his face changed; a
brightness, an alertness came into it and even, mysteriously, into all
his body. There was a woman at the other end of the wire, and she was
young and pretty, and she was asking him to meet her. As he was replying
gaily, with smiling lips, and a greedy look in his eyes that was half
child-like, half sat