"Oh-ho-ho!" laughed Julia. "It's so fu-nny—so funny!"
"Of course we are too near," said Robert.
"Say you admire that pink fondant over there," said Struthers, indicating with his eyebrows a blond large woman in white satin with pink edging, who sat in a box opposite, on the upper tier.
"Oh, the fondant—exactly—the fondant! Yes, I admire her immensely! Isn't she exactly it!" sang Julia.
Josephine was scanning the auditorium. So many myriads of faces—like beads on a bead-work pattern—all bead-work, in different layers. She bowed to various acquaintances—mostly Americans in uniform, whom she had known in Paris. She smiled to Lady Cochrane, two boxes off—Lady Cochrane had given her the box. But she felt rather coldly towards her.
The curtain rose, the opera wound its slow length along. The audience loved it. They cheered with mad enthusiasm. Josephine looked down on the choppy sea of applause, white gloves clapping, heads shaking. The noise was strange and rattling. What a curious multiple object a theatre-audience was! It seemed to have a million heads, a million hands, and one monstrous, unnatural consciousness. The singers appeared before the curtain—the applause rose up like clouds of dust.
"Oh, isn't it too wonderful!" cried Julia. "I am wild with excitement. Are you all of you?"
"Absolutely wild," said Lilly laconically.
"Where is Scott to-night?" asked Struthers.
Julia turned to him and gave him a long, queer look from her dark blue eyes.
"He's in the country," she said, rather enigmatic.
"Don't you know, he's got a house down in Dorset," said Robert, verbally rushing in. "He wants Julia to go down and stay."
"Is she going?" said Lilly.
"She hasn't decided," replied Robert.
"Oh! What's the objection?" asked Struthers.
"Well, none whatsoever, as far as can be seen, except that she can't make up her mind," replied Robert.
"Julia's got no mind," said Jim rudely.
"Oh! Hear the brotherly verdict!" laughed Julia hurriedly.
"You mean to go down to Dorset alone!" said Struthers.
"Why not?" replied Robert, answering for her.
"And stay how long?"
"Oh—as long as it lasts," said Robert again.
"Starting with eternity," said Lilly, "and working back to a fortnight."
"And what's the matter?—looks bad in the eyes of the world?"
"Yes—about that. Afraid of compromising herself—"
Lilly looked at them.
"Depends what you take the world to mean. Do you mean us in this box, or the crew outside there?" he jerked his head towards the auditorium.
"Do you think, Lilly, that we're the world?" said Robert ironically.
"Oh, yes, I guess we're shipwrecked in this box, like Robinson Crusoes. And what we do on our own little island matters to us alone. As for the infinite crowds of howling savages outside there in the unspeakable, all you've got to do is mind they don't scrap you."
"But won't they?" said Struthers.
"Not unless you put your head in their hands," said Lilly.
"I don't know—" said Jim.
But the curtain had risen, they hushed him into silence.
All through the next scene, Julia puzzled herself, as to whether she should go down to the country and live with Scott. She had carried on a nervous kind of amour with him, based on soul sympathy and emotional excitement. But whether to go and live with him? She didn't know if she wanted to or not: and she couldn't for her life find out. She was in that nervous state when desire seems to evaporate the moment fulfilment is offered.
When the curtain dropped she turned.
"You see," she said, screwing up her eyes, "I have to think of Robert." She cut the word in two, with an odd little hitch in her voice—"Rob-ert."
"My dear Julia, can't you believe that I'm tired of being thought of," cried Robert, flushing.
Julia screwed up her eyes in a slow smile, oddly cogitating.
"Well, who am I to think of?" she asked.
"Yourself," said Lilly.
"Oh, yes! Why, yes! I never thought of that!" She gave a hurried little laugh. "But then it's no fun to think about oneself," she cried flatly. "I think about Rob-ert, and Scott." She screwed up her eyes and peered oddly at the company.
"Which of them will find you the greatest treat," said Lilly sarcastically.
"Anyhow," interjected Robert nervously, "it will be something new for Scott."
"Stale buns for you, old boy," said Jim drily.
"I don't say so. But—" exclaimed the flushed, full-blooded Robert, who was nothing if not courteous to women.
"How long ha' you been married? Eh?" asked Jim.
"Six years!" sang Julia sweetly.
"Good God!"
"You see," said Robert, "Julia can't decide anything for herself. She waits for someone else to decide, then she puts her spoke in."
"Put it plainly—" began Struthers.
"But don't you know, it's no use putting it plainly," cried Julia.
"But do you want to be with Scott, out and out, or don't you?" said Lilly.
"Exactly!" chimed Robert. "That's the question for you to answer Julia."
"I won't answer it," she cried. "Why should I?" And she looked away into the restless hive of the theatre. She spoke so wildly that she attracted attention. But it half pleased her. She stared abstractedly down at the pit.
The men looked at one another in some comic consternation.
"Oh, damn it all!" said the long Jim, rising and stretching himself. "She's dead nuts on Scott. She's all over him. She'd have eloped with him weeks ago if it hadn't been so easy. She can't stand it that Robert offers to hand her into the taxi."
He gave his malevolent grin round the company, then went out. He did not reappear for the next scene.
"Of course, if she loves Scott—" began Struthers.
Julia
