ity of the worst. When the curtains
fell amid storms of applause and cut off the stage, the audience
perceived suddenly, like a revelation, that the young men and women whom
it knew so well in private life had been creating something--an
illusion, an ecstasy, a mood--which transcended the sum total of their
personalities. It was this miracle, but dimly apprehended perhaps, which
left the audience impressed, and eager for the next act.

* * * * *

'That madam will go her own road,' said Uncle Meshach under cover of the
clapping.

Leonora's smile was embarrassed. 'What do you mean?' she asked him.

He bent his head towards her, looking into her face with a sort of
generous cynicism.

'I mean she'll go her own road,' he repeated.

And then, observing that most of the men were leaving their seats, he
told Leonora that he should step across to the Tiger if she would let
him. As he passed out, leaning forward on a stick lightly clutched in
the left hand, several people demanded his opinion about the spectacle.
'Nay, nay----' he replied again and again, waving one after another out
of his course.

In the bar-parlour of the Tiger, the young blades, the genuine fast men,
the deliberate middle-aged persons who took one glass only, and the
regular nightly customers, mingled together in a dense and noisy crowd
under a canopy of smoke. The barmaid and her assistant enjoyed their
brief minutes of feverish contact with the great world. Behind the
counter, walled in by a rampart of dress-shirts, they conjured with
bottles, glasses, and taps, heard and answered ten men at once, reckoned
change by a magic beyond arithmetic, peered between shoulders to catch
the orders of their particular friends, and at the same time acquired
detailed information as to the progress of the opera. Late comers who,
forcing a way into the room, saw the multitude of men drinking and
smoking, and the unapproachable white faces of these two girls distantly
flowering in the haze and the odour, had that saturnalian sensation of
seeing life which is peculiar to saloons during the entr'actes of
theatrical entertainments. The success of the opera, and of that chit
Millicent Stanway, formed the staple of the eager conversation, though
here and there a sober couple would be discussing the tramcars or the
quinquennial assessment exactly as if Gilbert and Sullivan had never
been born. It appeared that Milly had a future, that she w