"It's the bulliest thing there's been in New York in years!" he
exclaimed, as he went to his dressing-room, where he found Claude, who
had been sitting in the orchestra, and who had now hurried round to ask
the singers how they felt in their parts. Gillier was with Miss Mardon,
at whose feet he was laying his homage.

Meanwhile Charmian was still quite alone.

She sat for a moment after the curtain fell.

"Surely Claude will come now!" she said to herself. "In decency he must
come!"

But no one came, and anger, the sense of desertion, grew in her till she
was unable to sit still any longer. She got up, turned, and again looked
toward the box in which she had fancied that she saw something move. Now
she saw a woman's arm and hand, a bit of a woman's shoulder. Somebody, a
woman, wearing sables, was in the box turning round, evidently in
conversation with another person who was hidden.

Adelaide Shiffney owned wonderful sables.

Without further hesitation Charmian, driven, made her way to the exit
from the stalls on her right, went out and found herself in the
blackness of the huge corridor running behind the ground tier boxes.
Before leaving the stalls she had tried to locate the box, and thought
that she had located it. She meant to go into it without knocking, as
one who supposed it to be empty. Now, with a feverish hand she felt for
a door-handle. She found one, turned it, and went into an empty box.
Standing still in it, she listened and heard a woman's voice that she
knew say:

"I dare say. But I don't mean to say anything yet. I have my reputation
to take care of, you must remember."

The words ended in a little laugh.

"It is Adelaide. She's in the next box!" said Charmian to herself.

For a moment a horrible idea suggested itself to her. She thought of
sitting down very softly and of eavesdropping. But the better part of
her at once rebelled against this idea, and without hesitation she
slipped out of the box. She stood still in the corridor for three or
four minutes. The fact that she had seriously thought of eavesdropping
almost frightened her, and she was trying to come to the resolve to
abandon her project of interrupting Mrs. Shiffney's conversation with
the hidden person who, she felt sure, must be Claude. Presently she
walked away a few steps, going toward the entrance. Then she stopped
again.

"I have my reputation to take care of, you must remember."

Adelaide Shiffney's words kept passing