LOVE BY THE AUTHOR OF “ELIZABETH AND HER GERMAN GARDEN” MACMILLAN AND CO., LIMITED ST. MARTIN’S STREET, LONDON 1925 COPYRIGHT PRINTED IN GREAT BRITAIN PART I I The first time they met, though they didn’t know it, for they were unconscious of each other, was at <i>The Immortal Hour</i>, then playing to almost empty houses away at King’s Cross; but they both went so often, and the audience at that time was so conspicuous because there was so little of it and so much room to put it in, that quite soon people who went frequently got to know each other by sight, and felt friendly and inclined to nod and smile, and this happened too to Christopher and Catherine. She first became aware of him on the evening of her fifth visit, when she heard two people talking just behind her before the curtain went up, and one said, sounding proud, ‘This is my eleventh time’; and the other answered carelessly, ‘This is my thirty-secondth’--upon which the first one exclaimed, ‘Oh, I <i>say</i>!’ with much the sound of a pricked balloon wailing itself flat, and she couldn’t resist turning her face, lit up with interest and amusement, to look. Thus she saw Christopher consciously for the first time, and he saw her. After that they noticed each other’s presence for three more performances, and then, when it was her ninth and his thirty-sixth--for the enthusiasts of <i>The Immortal Hour</i> kept jealous count of their visits--and they found themselves sitting in the same row with only twelve empty seats between them, he moved up six nearer to her when the curtain went down between the two scenes of the first act, and when it went down at the end of the first act, after that love scene which invariably roused the small band of the faithful to a kind of mystic frenzy of delight, he moved up the other six and sat down boldly beside her. She smiled at him, a friendly and welcoming smile. ‘It’s so beautiful,’ he said apologetically, as if this explained his coming over to her. ‘Perfectly beautiful,’ she said; and added, ‘This is my ninth time.’ And he said, ‘This is my thirty-sixth.’ And she said, ‘I know.’ And he said, ‘How do you know?’ And she said, ‘Because I heard you tell someone when it was your thirty-secondth, and I’ve been counting since.’ So they made friends, and Christopher thought he had never seen anybody with such a sweet way of smiling, or heard anybody with such a funny little coo of a voice.