I was conscious, though I couldn’t see where they sat in the gallery, that their three pairs of eyes must be glued to us in our front-row stalls. Nothing could have been more conventional than our appearance—we were absolutely the model of a prosperous young engaged couple up from the suburbs; I, prettily dressed, with the inevitable box of chocolates on my lap; he, good tempered and easy of manner, paying me all the customary attentions of programme, helping me off with my coat, seeing that I had opera-glasses, the best seat, and so on, and yet—apart from the “official engagement” side of it, how _really_ unconventional was our relation! So much more satisfactory under the circumstances than a real engagement! Or that pie-bald thing, an understanding! Or that other form of platonic friendship which either the girl or the man is always hoping, or fearing, may turn into something else! The curtain went up to the soft strains of a tune which I, who have had to play accompaniments to so many songs, didn’t know.... But beside us and behind us there were old ladies who murmured, “Ah! ‘_She wore a Wreath of Roses._’” The play began, and I forgot everything else for a time. In the first interval we amused ourselves by looking at the audience. They were nearly _all_ elderly ladies! As the Governor remarked, “Nancy! Yours and mine are the only heads for three rows of seats that aren’t grey-haired or covered with bonnets!” “They’ve come to catch echoes of their past,” I murmured flippantly as those tunes from the _Mikado_ sent the curtain up on Act II. That finished my flippancy for me. In what seemed like hours afterwards I heard Mr. Waters’ voice, cool and detached, saying something about good acting and soothing syrup and the most sentimental public in the world, then breaking off suddenly, anxiously to exclaim, “What is it, Nancy? Aren’t you well?” “Of c-course I am! I’m only enjoying myself!” I sobbed quietly; tears dripping down on to the pleated frill of my afternoon blouse. “I think it’s p-perfectly lovely!” And I dabbed my face with the powder-puff swathed in my handkerchief. “Rum idea of enjoyment,” said the Governor doubtfully. “Not a bit rum,” I argued, having steadied myself again. “You don’t know much about girls—they’re mostly like that—ask any of them—ask any of the other typists in your office!” “I suppose I’ve never looked upon those as ‘girls,’” said he. “They’re—machines! machines that eat cherries all day long and chuck the stones all over the floor. Such inefficient ones, too; they——Why d’you laugh, Nancy! I say, you know quite well I don’t mean——” “Ssh!” came indignantly from under the bonnet—trimmed with squashed heliotropes and doddering jet beads—on the other side of him, as the band struck up the rollicking two-step that heralds the twentieth-century act. I didn’t cry any more, though.