He stopped a moment, then added abruptly:

"We'll go along to the Palaceum to-night, if you like, Desmond,"
and Desmond joyfully acquiesced. To one who has been living for
weeks in an ill-ventilated pill-box on the Passchendaele Ridge,
the lights and music and color of a music-hall seem as a
foretaste of Paradise.

And that was what Desmond Okewood thought as a few hours later he
found himself with Maurice Strangwise in the stalls of the vast
Palaceum auditorium. In the unwonted luxury of evening clothes he
felt clean and comfortable, and the cigar he way smoking was the
climax of one of Julien's most esoteric efforts.

The cards on either side of the proscenium opening bore the
words: "Deputy Turn." On the stage was a gnarled old man with
ruddy cheeks and a muffler, a seedy top hat on his head, a
coaching whip in his hand, the old horse bus-driver of London in
his habit as he had lived. The old fellow stood there and just
talked to the audience of a fine sporting class of men that
petrol has driven from the streets, without exaggerated humor or
pathos. Desmond, himself a born Cockney, at once fell under the
actor's spell and found all memories of the front slipping away
from him as the old London street characters succeeded one
another on the stage. Then the orchestra blared out, the curtain
descended, and the house broke into a great flutter of applause.

Desmond, luxuriating in his comfortable stall puffed at his cigar
and fell into a pleasant reverie.

He was contrasting the ghastly nightmare of mud and horrors from
which he had only just emerged with the scene of elegance, of
civilization; around him.

Suddenly, his attention became riveted on the stage. The
atmosphere of the theatre had changed. Always quick at picking up
"influences," Desmond instantly sensed a new mood in the throngs
around him. A presence was in the theatre, an instinct-awakening,
a material influence. The great audience was strangely hushed.
The air was heavy with the tent of incense. The stringed
instruments and oboes in the orchestra were wandering into
[Updater's note: a line appears to be missing from the source here]
rhythmic dropped.

Maurice touched his elbow.

"There she is!" he said.

Desmond felt inclined to shake him off roughly. The interruption
jarred on him. For he was looking at this strangely beautiful
girl with her skin showing very brown beneath a wonderful silver
tiara-like headdress, and in the broad intersti