The preliminary music neared its ending; and the first part of Aliette's ordeal, even more terrible than she had anticipated, was almost over by the time that Mary O'Riordan billowed her imposing way to the front of the stage-box. Other people followed, but Mary's hoydenish bulk, draped in the gold and scarlet of some super-Wagnerian goddess, dwarfed them to the insignificance of pygmies.

Aliette's heart, still numb from its effort at self-control, gave one pleasurable beat at sight of her friend. She smiled across the house at Mary. Their eyes met, clashed. And in that moment, the house darkled.

The curtain had been up a full three minutes before Aliette realized that those blue eyes of Mary's intended the cut direct. Realizing, every nerve in her tense body throbbed with resentment at the ingratitude. Mary to cut her! Mary of all people! Mary, by whose side she had stood stanch through a year of trouble! Mary, whose affair with Letchingbury provided the very money which sent up the curtain, which bought the scenery and paid the actors of "Khorassan"!

Gradually, the first throbs of Aliette's resentment subsided, leaving her every nerve a living pain. Mary's ingratitude hurt, hurt. "Most women are awful rotters"; Mollie's words, uttered long ago at Moor Park, came back to her.

She tried to distract her mind with the play; but O'Riordan's play--poor, thinly-poetic stuff, indifferently mouthed by mummers whose sole claim to their salary was their supping-acquaintance with the fringe of Society--failed to hold her thoughts. Her thoughts hovered between the enemy audience, blur of heads below, and the two friends, her only friends in a hostile world, on either side.

Thinking of their loyalty, Aliette no longer shrank from her ordeal. Her heart swelled, resolute against all hostility. It became two hearts: the one, warm and throbbing with partizanship for the stark old lady beside her, the old lady who had never turned a hair since they entered the theater, and for the "old lady's" son, for the man whose love was a rock: the other, icy-cold, almost beatless, frozen to contempt.

What a farce was this social game! As if the world's hostility mattered! One played one's little part on the stage of life, played it as best one might to the prompting of conscience, till the curtain fell, as it was falling now to a subdued rattle of perfunctory applause and the usual "snatched" calls.

Aliette felt Ronnie's fingers tighten on her own, relax. The house lights went up.

"Letchingbury will lose his money," remarked Julia calmly. "O'Riordan's poetic drama is merely an excuse for bad poetry and no drama. By the way, that is Letchingbury, isn't it?" She looked across at the stage-box; and Ronnie, looking with her, saw a young man, blond, with a receding chin and a receding forehead.

"Yes. That's Letchingbury all right," he said. "And, by the way, Alie, isn't that your friend, Mrs. O'Riordan?"

"I should hardly call her my friend," answered Aliette, a little bitterly; and steeled herself to look down at the stalls. Hector's was already empty. The remainder of the Brunton party sat perfectly rigid. Sir Peter Wilberforce, remembering himself one of Julia Cavendish's executors, managed a surreptitious nod. Dot Fancourt, like Hector, had escaped. Various dramatic critics, sidling their way out of the stalls toward the bar, bowed to Julia as though nothing out of the ordinary had occurred. Mary O'Riordan retired ostentatiously to the back of her box.

Aliette panicked again. Suppose Ronnie left her? Suppose Ronnie and Hector met--in public? But Ronnie, for all his obtuser mind, divined that his women-folk were under fire; and that duty forbade him to desert. He whispered to her:

"Not so bad as you anticipated, eh? Of course one can't expect the Bruntons to be exactly cordial."

"I wish they hadn't been here," whispered back Aliette. "It makes things so much worse."

"Rubbish!" interrupted Julia. "It's the best thing that could possibly have happened. He'll have to bring his action after this, or be the laughing-stock of Mayfair."

While the auditorium emptied and filled again, Julia, her head erect, her hands quiet, talked on--as though the lack of Dot's usual visit to her box were of no moment. Ronnie, every fiber in him furious, played up to her. But Aliette could not speak. In her, social instincts were at war with conscience. Feeling herself definitely in the wrong toward society, yet definitely in the right toward her own soul, feeling terribly afraid, yet terribly courageous, striving desperately to wrench out the iron of resentment from her mind, striving piteously to forget the hurt of the wound which Mary O'Riordan had dealt her, she played her game in dumb show. And furtively, fearfully, as the music for the second act began, she watched for Hector's return.

But Hector did not return. Even when the house lights went out and the curtain rose again, Aliette could see that his stall remained empty. Subconsciously she knew that he had fled the theater.

The second act of "Khorassan" dragged to its undramatic climax. Once again those three faced the eyes of the audience. Now, more than ever, it seemed to Aliette, still sitting rigid in the forefront of Julia's box, as though all eyes were hostile, as though the entire house, and with it her entire social world, had decided to ostracize them.

All through that overlong entr'acte, she sat speechless; her brown pupils hard and bright; her white shoulders squared above the black sequined dress; her pale face, her red lips set to an almost sullen determination. And, as the entr'acte ended, those hard brown pupils fell to devisaging Mary O'Riordan. Till, visibly ill at ease, the cow-eyes under Mary's mop of gold hair turned away.

But it gave Aliette no pleasure to realize that, hurt, she had retaliated.