im, blindly but painfully; without
the ease of young love, but with all the sickness of first love. And she
had jealousy, the feeling that she was not his first object, to poison
her feelings. She could not think of Jenny without tremors of anger. And
still, for pain, her thoughts went throbbing on about Jenny whenever, in
happiness, she had seen a home and Alf and a baby and the other plain
clear consequences of earning his love--of taking him from Jenny.

And then the curtain rose, the darkness fell, and the orchestra's tune
slithered into nothing. The play went on, about the crook and the
general and the millionaire and the heroine and all their curiously
simple-minded friends. And every moment something happened upon the
stage, from fights to thefts, from kisses (which those in the gallery,
not wholly absorbed by the play, generously augmented) to telephone
calls, plots, speeches (many speeches, of irreproachable moral tone),
shoutings, and sudden wild appeals to the delighted occupants of the
gallery. And Emmy sat through it hardly heeding the uncommon events,
aware of them as she would have been aware of distant shouting. Her
attention was preoccupied with other matters. She had her own thoughts,
serious enough in themselves. Above all, she was enjoying the thought
that she was with Alf, and that their arms were touching; and she was
wondering if he knew that.

iv

Through another interval they sat with silent embarrassment, the
irreplaceable chocolates, which had earlier been consumed, having served
their turn as a means of devouring attention. Alf was tempted to fly to
the bar for a drink and composure, but he did not like to leave Emmy;
and he could not think of anything which could safely be said to her in
the middle of this gathering of hot and radiant persons. "To speak" in
such uproar meant "to shout." He felt that every word he uttered would
go echoing in rolls and rolls of sound out among the multitude. They
were not familiar enough to make that a matter of indifference to him.
He was in the stage of secretiveness. And Emmy, after trying once or
twice to open various small topics, had fallen back upon her own
thoughts, and could invent nothing to talk about until the difficulties
that lay between them had been removed. Her brow contracted. She moved
her shoulders, or sat pressed reservedly against the back of her seat.
Her voice, whenever she did not immediately hear some word fall from
Alf, became s