the gallery shabbiness; they were shabby because shabbiness was part
of their unworldly refinement; and it did not matter--they would have got
their free seats even if they had come in sacks and cerements.

The second main division of the audience--and the larger--consisted of the
jolly pleasure seekers, who had dined well, who respected Beethoven no more
than Oscar Straus, and who demanded only one boon--not to be bored. They
had full dimpled cheeks, and they were adequately attired, and they dropped
cigarettes with reluctance in the foyer, and they entered adventurously
with marked courage, well aware that they had come to something queer and
dangerous, something that was neither a revue nor a musical comedy, and,
while hoping optimistically for the best, determined to march boldly out
again in the event of the worst. They had seven mortal evenings a week to
dispose of somehow, and occasionally they were obliged to take risks. Their
expressions for the most part had that condescension which is
characteristic of those who take a risk without being paid for it.

All around the hall ran a horseshoe of private boxes, between the balcony
and the gallery. These boxes gradually filled. At a quarter-past nine over
half of them were occupied; which fact, combined with the stylishness of
the hats in them, proved that Xavier had immense skill in certain
directions, and that on that night, for some reason or other, he had been
doing his very best.

At twenty minutes past nine the audience had coalesced and become an
entity, and the group from the Quarter was stamping an imitation of the
first bars of the C minor Symphony, to indicate that further delay might
involve complications.

Audrey sat with Miss Ingate modestly and inconspicuously in the fifth row
of the stalls. Miss Ingate, prodigious in crimson, was in a state of
beatitude, because she never went to concerts and imagined that she had
inadvertently slipped into heaven. The mere size of the orchestra so
overwhelmed her that she was convinced that it was an orchestra specially
enlarged to meet the unique importance of Musa's genius. "They _must_ think
highly of him!" she said. She employed the time in looking about her. She
had already found, besides many other Anglo-Saxon acquaintances, Rosamund,
in black, Tommy with Nick, and Mr. Cowl, who was one seat to Audrey's left
in the sixth row of the stalls. Also Mr. Gilman and Madame Piriac and
Monsieur Piriac in a double box.