She stayed in the box, sitting between Mrs. Graham and Mary, until the end of the play. The curtain had gone down to applause and laughter and had been raised again and a third and fourth time, and then the audience had demanded that the author should appear. Somewhere in the gallery, they could hear the faint groan of the man who attends all first nights and groans on principle. "I'd like to punch that chap's jaw!" Ninian muttered, glancing up at the gallery indignantly. There was more applause and a louder and more insistent shout of "Author! Author!" and the curtain went up, and Gilbert, very nervous and very pale, came on to the stage and bowed. Then, after another curtain call, the lights were lowered and the audience began to disperse.

There was to be a supper party at the Carlton, because the Carlton was nearer to the Pall Mall than the Savoy, and Sir Geoffrey Mundane and Mrs. Michael Gordon had accepted Gilbert's invitation to join them. "It'll cost a hell of a lot," Gilbert said to Henry, "but what's money for? When I die, they'll put on my tombstone, 'He was born in debt, he lived in debt, he died in debt, and he didn't care a damn. So be it!' He extended his invitation to Jimphy and Lady Cecily.

"You didn't come to Jimphy's birthday party," she objected.

"Didn't I?" he replied. "Well, both of you come to my party ... that'll make up for it!"

Gilbert did not appear to be affected by Cecily's presence. He had greeted her naturally, behaving to her in as friendly a way as he would have behaved if she had been Mrs. Graham. Henry, remembering the scene on the Embankment, had difficulty in understanding Gilbert's easy manner. Had he been in Gilbert's place, he knew that he would have been awkward, constrained, tongue-tied. Undoubtedly, Gilbert had savoir faire. So, too, had Cecily. Her look of irritation with Henry had disappeared as she entered the box. He, following after her, had been nervous and self-conscious, feeling that the flushed look on his face must betray him to his friends; but Cecily had none of these awkwardnesses. She behaved as easily as if the scene with Henry had not taken place. "You'd think she hadn't any feelings," he murmured to himself, and as he did so, it seemed to him that in that moment he knew Cecily, knew her once and for all. She had no feelings, no particular feelings for any one, not even for Gilbert. She was a beautiful animal, eager for emotional diversions, but indifferent to the creature that pleased her after it had pleased her. If Henry were to quit her now and never return to her, she might some day say, "I wonder where poor Paddy is!" and turn carelessly to a new lover; but that would be all. Gilbert had piqued her, perhaps, but he had done no more than that, though probably it was more than Henry could ever hope to do, and she had yawned a little with the tedium of waiting for him, and then had decided to yawn no more....

He fell among platitudes. "Like a butterfly," he said to himself. "Just like a damned butterfly!"

Well, he thought, mentally cooler because of his revelation, that is an attitude towards life that has many advantages. One might call Cecily a stoical amorist, an erotic philosopher. "Love where you can, and don't bother where you can't!" might serve her for a motto. "And, really, that's rather a good way of getting through these plaguey emotions of ours!" he told himself. "Only," he went on, "you can't walk in that way just because you think it's a good one!"

He sat between Lady Cecily and Mary at supper, but he did not talk a great deal to either of them, for Mary was chattering excitedly to Sir Geoffrey Mundane, and Cecily was persuading Ninian that engineering had always been the passion of her life. "I quite agree," she was saying, "a Channel Tunnel would be very useful and ... and so convenient, too. I've often said that to Jimphy, but dear Jimphy doesn't pretend to understand these things!" She had turned to him once and, in a whisper, had said, "Which of you is in love with Mary?" but he had pretended to be wooden and hard of understanding.

"My dear Paddy," she said, raising her eyebrows, "I believe you're sulking ... just because I wouldn't run away with you. You're as bad as Gilbert!"

"You're perfectly brutal," he said under his breath.

"Aren't you exaggerating?" she replied. "And if I had gone off with you, we'd have missed this nice supper. Do be sociable, there's a dear Paddy, and perhaps I'll run away with you next Tuesday!"

There was a babble of conversation about them, and much laughter, for Gilbert, reacting from his fright, was full of bright talk, and Sir Geoffrey, reminiscent, capped it with entertaining tales of dramatists and stage people. It was easy for Cecily and Henry to carry on their conversation in quiet tones without fear of being overheard.

"You treat me like a boy," he said reproachfully.

"You are a boy, Paddy dear, and a very nice boy!"

"I suppose," he retorted, "it's impossible for you to understand that I love you...."

"Indeed, it isn't," she interrupted. "I understand that quite easily. What I can't understand is why you wish to spoil everything by silly proposals to ... to elope!..."

"But I love you," he insisted. "Isn't that enough to make you understand?"

She shook her head, and turned again to Ninian.

"You see," Ninian said, "you bore through this big bed of chalk from both sides...."

"But how do you know the two ends will meet?" she asked.

"Oh, engineers manage that sort of thing easily," Ninian answered. "Think of the Simplon Tunnel!..."

"Yes!" she said, to indicate that she was thinking of it.

"Well, that met, didn't it?"

"Did it?" she replied. "Oh, but of course it must have met. I've been through it!..."

"There was hardly an inch of divergence between the two ends," he went on....

"Hell's flames!" Henry said to himself.