repast consumed now in an hour. The vast apartment was packed with
people living at just that rate of expenditure and seeming to think
naught of it. "But do two wrongs make a right?" he privately demanded of
his soul. Then his soul came to the rescue with its robust commonsense
and replied:

"Perhaps two wrongs don't make a right, but five hundred wrongs
positively must make a right." And he felt better.

And suddenly he understood the true function of the magnificent
orchestra that dominated the scene. It was the function of a brass band
at a quack-dentist's booth in a fair,--to drown the cries of the victims
of the art of extraction.

"Yes," he reflected, full of health and carelessness. "This is a truly
great life."

The party went off in two automobiles, his own and Lady Massulam's.
Cars were fighting for room in front of the blazing facade of the
Metropolitan Theatre, across which rose in fire the title of the
entertainment, _Smack Your Face_, together with the names of Asprey
Chown and Eliza Fiddle. Car after car poured out a contingent of
glorious girls and men and was hustled off with ferocity by a row of
gigantic and implacable commissionaires. Mr. Oswald Morfey walked
straight into the building at the head of his guests. Highly expensive
persons were humbling themselves at the little window of the box office,
but Ozzie held his course, and officials performed obeisances which
stopped short only at falling flat on their faces at the sight of him.
Tickets were not for him.

"This is a beautiful box," said Eve to him, amazed at the grandeur of
the receptacle into which they had been ushered.

"It's Mr. Chown's own box."

"Then isn't Mr. Chown to be here to-night?"

"No! He went to Paris this morning for a rest. The acting manager will
telephone to him after each act. That's how he always does, you know."

"When the cat's away the mice will play," thought Mr. Prohack
uncomfortably, with the naughty sensations of a mouse. The huge
auditorium was a marvellous scene of excited brilliance. As the stalls
filled up a burst of clapping came at intervals from the unseen pit.

"What are they clapping for?" said the simple Eve, who, like Mr.
Prohack, had never been to a first-night before, to say nothing of such
a super-first-night as this.

"Oh!" replied Ozzie negligently. "Some one they know by sight just come
into the stalls. The _chic_ thing in the pit is to recognise, and to
show by applause that you have