At twelve o’clock on the night that witnessed the production of the tragedy, Lucian found himself one of a group of six men which had gathered together in Harcourt’s dressing-room. There was a blue haze of cigarette smoke all over the room; a decanter of whisky with syphons and glasses stood on a table in the centre; most of the men had already helped themselves to a drink. Lucian found a glass in his own hand, and sipped the mixture in it he recognised the taste of soda, and remembered in a vague fashion that he much preferred Apollinaris, but he said to himself, or something said to him, that it didn’t matter. His brain was whirling with the events of the night; he still saw, as in a dream, the misty auditorium as he had seen it from a box; the stage as he had seen it during a momentary excursion to the back of the dress-circle; the busy world behind the scenes where stage-carpenters sweated and swore, and the dust made one’s throat tickle. He recalled particular faces and heard particular voices; all the world and his wife had been there, and all the first-nighters, and all his friends, and he had spoken to a great many people. They all seemed to swim before him as in a dream, and the sound of their voices came, as it were, from the cylinder of a phonograph. He remembered seeing Mr. Chilverstone and his wife in the stalls--their faces were rapt and eloquent; in the stalls, too, he had seen Sprats and Lord Saxonstowe and Mrs. Berenson; he himself had spent some of the time with Haidee and Darlington and other people of their set in a box, but he had also wandered in and out of Harcourt’s dressing-room a good deal, and had sometimes spoken to Harcourt, and sometimes to his business manager. He had a vague recollection that he had faced the house himself at the end of everything, and had bowed several times in response to cheering which was still buzzing in his ears. The night was over.