t might have been induced
either by tender ecstasy or acute boredom.

All around them were noisy Americans, neatly dressed, and a good many
prim, self-conscious ladies on the stage who had come on from their
_matinees_ and were accompanied mostly either by very young and rather
chinless adorers, or by fat, fatuous men with dark moustaches, hair
inclined to curl, and clothes a shade too gorgeous.

Here and there a simple, provincial-looking family were to be seen who
had come up for a few days and had been to an afternoon performance, and
were talking with great animation of the rights and wrongs of the hero
and heroine of the play. It was characteristic of the provincials that
they were really excited about the play itself, hardly knowing who were
performing, while the suburbanites took interest only in the actors, all
of whom they knew well by name and reputation, even their private
life--at least, as much of it as got into the _Prattler_, _The Perfect
Lady_, and _Home Chirps_.

On the whole it was a very characteristic London crowd, in that it
consisted almost entirely of desirable aliens. Here and there, indeed,
one saw a thin, slim, pretty woman with a happy but bothered-looking
young man, both obviously English, who talked in low tones, and were
evidently at some stage or other of a rose-coloured romance; but they
were the exception.

Amidst this noisy and confused clientele, with its showy clothes and
obvious feminine charms, Miss Luscombe looked a strange, stray, untidy
hothouse plant. She was odd and artificial, and dressed like nothing on
earth, in pale and faded colours; but she was not vulgar. She was rather
queer and delicate, and intensely amiable. Her self-consciousness made
no claim on one; she was not exacting--always pleased and good-tempered.
Rathbone recognised these qualities in her, and liked her better to-day,
amidst the scent of the tea-cakes and cigarettes and the whine of the
violin, than he had ever liked her before.

Pink, fair, calm, clean, and really hardly anything else, except
extremely correct, and always good form, without being too noticeably
so, no one would have dreamed that this quiet young man, who looked like
a shy subaltern, was simply dying to disport himself on the stage, and
that it was the dream of his life to make an utter ass of himself as
Hamlet, or a hopeless fool of himself as (say) the hero in _Still Waters
Run Deep_--a play he had seen as a boy and had always longe