ed his fine eyes on him wonderingly.

"What old woman?"

"Why, the old ass with the platitudes!"

Halidome's countenance grew cold, a little shocked, as though he had been
assailed in person.

"Do you mean Pirbright?" he said. "I think he's ripping."

Shelton turned to the play rebuffed; he felt guilty of a breach of
manners, sitting as he was in one of his friend's stalls, and he
naturally set to work to watch the play more critically than ever.
Antonia's words again recurred to him, "I don't like unhealthy people,"
and they seemed to throw a sudden light upon this play. It was healthy!

The scene was a drawing-room, softly lighted by electric lamps, with a
cat (Shelton could not decide whether she was real or not) asleep upon
the mat.

The husband, a thick-set, healthy man in evening dress, was drinking off
neat whisky. He put down his tumbler, and deliberately struck a match;
then with even greater deliberation he lit a gold-tipped cigarette....

Shelton was no inexperienced play-goer. He shifted his elbows, for he
felt that something was about to happen; and when the match was pitched
into the fire, he leaned forward in his seat. The husband poured more
whisky out, drank it at a draught, and walked towards the door; then,
turning to the audience as if to admit them to the secret of some
tremendous resolution, he puffed at them a puff of smoke. He left the
room, returned, and once more filled his glass. A lady now entered, pale
of face and dark of eye--his wife. The husband crossed the stage, and
stood before the fire, his legs astride, in the attitude which somehow
Shelton had felt sure he would assume. He spoke:

"Come in, and shut the door."

Shelton suddenly perceived that he was face to face with one of those
dumb moments in which two people declare their inextinguishable
hatred--the hatred underlying the sexual intimacy of two ill-assorted
creatures--and he was suddenly reminded of a scene he had once witnessed
in a restaurant. He remembered with extreme minuteness how the woman and
the man had sat facing each other across the narrow patch of white,
emblazoned by a candle with cheap shades and a thin green vase with
yellow flowers. He remembered the curious scornful anger of their
voices, subdued so that only a few words reached him. He remembered the
cold loathing in their eyes. And, above all, he remembered his
impression that this sort of scene happened between them every other day,