he
glanced along the stalls. No one was sitting in a line with her. In
front of her she saw only the few people who had already taken their
places when the curtain went up. She gave her attention again to the
stage, but only with a strong effort. And very soon she was again
compelled by this strange uneasiness to look about the theater. Now she
felt certain that somebody whom she had not yet seen, but who was near
to her, was disturbing her. And she thought, "Claude must have come in!"
On this thought she turned round rather sharply, and looked behind her
at the boxes. She did not actually see anyone. But it seemed to her
that, as she turned and looked, something moved back in a box very near
to her, on her left. And immediately she felt certain that that box was
occupied.

"Adelaide Shiffney's there!"

Suddenly that certainty took possession of her. And Claude? Where was
he?

Hitherto she had supposed that Claude was behind the scenes, or perhaps
in the orchestra sitting near the conductor, Meroni; but now jealousy
sprang up in her. If Claude were with Adelaide Shiffney in that box
while she sat alone! If Claude had really known all the time that
Adelaide Shiffney was coming and had not told her, Charmian! Unreason,
which is the offspring of jealousy, filled her mind. She burned with
anger.

"I know he is in that box with her!" she thought. "And he did not tell
me she was coming because he wanted to be with her at the rehearsal and
not with me."

And suddenly her intense, her painful interest in the opera faded away
out of her. She was concentrated upon the purely human things. Her
imagination of a possibility, which her jealousy already proclaimed a
certainty, blotted out even the opera. Woman, man--the intentness of the
heart came upon her, like a wave creeping all over her, blotting out
landmarks.

The curtain fell on the first act. It had gone well, unexpectedly well.
Behind the scenes there were congratulations. Crayford was radiant. Mr.
Mulworth wiped his brow fanatically, but looked almost human as he spoke
in a hoarse remnant of voice to a master carpenter. Enid Mardon went off
the stage with the massive dressmaker in almost amicable conversation.
Meroni, the Milanese conductor, mounted up from his place in the
subterranean regions, smiling brilliantly and twisting his black
moustaches. Alston Lake had got rid of his nervousness. He knew he had
done well and was more "mad" about the opera than ever.