her when she went alone into an empty room.
"But I never am alone, even in an empty room. There's always Michael, or Evie, or Charles, or the public; not in the flesh, of course, but in the spirit, as it were. I must speak to Charles about Roger."
Unfortunately he was away. But he was coming back for the dress-rehearsal and the first night; he had not missed these occasions for twenty years, and they had always had supper together after the dress-rehearsal. Michael would remain in the theatre, busy with the lights and so on, so that they would be alone. They would be able to have a good talk.
She studied her part. Julia did not deliberately create the character she was going to act by observation; she had a knack of getting into the shoes of the woman she had to portray so that she thought with her mind and felt with her senses. Her intuition suggested to her a hundred small touches that afterwards amazed people by their verisimilitude;* but when they asked her where she had got them she could not say. Now she wanted to show the courageous yet uneasy breeziness of the Mrs. Marten who played golf and could talk to a man like one good chap to another and yet, essentially a respectable, middle-class woman, hankered for the security of the marriage state.
Michael never liked to have a crowd at a dress-rehearsal,* and this time, anxious to keep the secret of the play till the first night, he had admitted besides Charles only the people, photographers and dressmakers, whose presence was necessary. Julia spared herself. She had no intention of giving all she had to give till the first night. It was enough if her performance was adequate. Under Michael's business-like direction everything went off without a hitch, and by ten o'clock Julia and Charles were sitting in the Grill Room of the Savoy. The first thing she asked him was what he thought of Avice Crichton.
"Not at all bad and wonderfully pretty. She really looked lovely in that second-act dress."
"I'm not going to wear the dress I wore in the second act. Charley Deverill has made me another."
He did not see the slightly humorous glance she gave him, and if he had would not have guessed what it meant. Michael, having taken Julia's advice, had gone to a good deal of trouble with Avice. He had rehearsed her by herself upstairs in his private room and had given her every intonation and every gesture. He had also, Julia had good reason to believe, lunched with her several times and taken her out to supper. The result of all this was that she was playing the part uncommonly well. Michael rubbed his hands.
"I'm very pleased with her. I think she'll make quite a hit. I've half a mind to give her a contract."
"I wouldn't," said Julia. "Not till after the first night. You can never really tell how a performance is going to pan out till you've got an audience."
"She's a nice girl and a perfect lady."
"A nice girl, I suppose, because she's madly in love with you, and a perfect lady because she's resisting your advances till she's got a contract."
"Oh, my dear, don't be so silly. Why, I'm old enough to be her father."
But he smiled complacently. She knew very well that his love-making went no farther than holding hands and a kiss or two in a taxi, but she knew also that it flattered him to imagine that she suspected him capable of infidelity.
But now Julia, having satisfied her appetite with proper regard for her figure, attacked the subject which was on her mind.
"Charles dear, I want to talk to you about Roger."
"Oh yes, he came back the other day, didn't he? How is he?"
"My dear, a most terrible thing has happened. He's come back a fearful prig and I don't know what to do about it."
She gave him her version of the conversation. She left out one or two things that it seemed inconvenient to mention, but what she told was on the whole accurate.
"The tragic thing is that he has absolutely no sense of humour," she finished.
"After all he's only eighteen."
"You could have knocked me down with a feather when he said all those things to me. I felt just like Balaam when his ass broke into light conversation."
She gave him a gay look, but he did not even smile. He did not seem to think her remark as