She imagined that owing to their late arrival she must have missed the one essential clue to the plot of _The Dolmenico Doll_, and as the gorgeously decorated action was developed on the dazzling stage she tried in vain to grasp its significance. The fall of the curtain came as a surprise to her. The end of the first act had left her with nothing but a confused notion of the interior of a confectioner's shop, and young men therein getting tipsy and stealing kisses, and marvellously pretty girls submitting to the robbery with a nonchalance born of three hundred and fifty four similar experiences; and old men grotesque in a dissolute senility; and sudden bursts of orchestral music, and simpering ballads, and comic refrains and crashing choruses; and lights, _lingerie_, picture-hats and short skirts; and over all, dominating all, the set, eternal, mechanical, bored smile of the pretty girls. 'Awfully good, isn't it?' said Harry, when the generous applause had ceased. 'It's simply lovely,' Milly agreed, fidgeting on her chair in juvenile rapture. 'Yes,' Leonora admitted. And she indeed thought that parts of it were amusing and agreeable. 'Of course,' Harry remarked hastily to Leonora, '_Princess Puck_ isn't at all like this. It's an idyll sort of thing, you know. By the way, hadn't I better go out and offer a reward for the recovery of Twemlow?' He returned just as the curtain went up, bringing a faint odour of whisky, but without Twemlow. A few moments later, while the principal pretty girl was warbling an invitation to her lover amid the diversions of Narragansett Pier, the latch of the door clicked and Arthur noiselessly entered the box. He nodded cheerfully, murmuring 'Sorry I'm so late,' and then shook hands with Leonora. She could not find her voice. In the hazard of rearranging the seats, an operation which Harry from diffidence conducted with a certain clumsiness, Arthur was placed behind Milly while Leonora had Harry by her side. 'You've missed all the first act, and everyone says it's the best,' Milly remarked, leaning towards Arthur with an air of intimacy. And Harry expressed agreement. 'But you must remember I saw it in New York two years ago,' Leonora heard him whisper in reply. She liked his avuncular, slightly quizzical attitude to them. He reinforced the elder generation in the box, reducing by his mere presence the two young and callow creatures to their proper position in the scheme of things.