And so, when the train rolled in, and the Goodwins alighted, and Margaret kissed me, by an extraordinarily lucky chance I found that I loved her more dearly than ever. That _première_ is still fresh in my memory. Mrs. Goodwin, Margaret, and myself occupied the stage box, and in various parts of the house I could see the familiar faces of those whom I had invited as my guests. I felt it was the supreme event of my life. It was _the_ moment. And surely I should have spoilt it all unless my old-time friends had been sitting near me. Eva and Julian were with Mr. and Mrs. Gunton-Cresswell in the box opposite us. To the Barrel Club I had sent the first row of the dress circle. It was expensive, but worth it. Hatton and Sidney Price were in the stalls. Tom Blake had preferred a free pass to the gallery. Kit and Malim were at the back of the upper circle (this was, Malim told me, Kit’s own choice). One by one the members of the orchestra took their places for the overture, and it was to the appropriate strains of “Land of Hope and Glory” that the curtain rose on the first act of my play. The first act, I should mention (though it is no doubt superfluous to do so) is bright and suggestive, but ends on a clear, firm note of pathos. That is why, as soon as the lights went up, I levelled my glasses at the eyes of the critics. Certainly in two cases, and, I think, in a third, I caught the glint of tear-drops. One critic was blowing his nose, another sobbed like a child, and I had a hurried vision of a third staggering out to the foyer with his hand to his eyes. Margaret was removing her own tears with a handkerchief. Mrs. Goodwin’s unmoved face may have hidden a lacerated soul, but she did not betray herself. Hers may have been the thoughts that lie too deep for tears. At any rate, she did not weep. Instead, she drew from her reticule the fragmentary writings of an early Portuguese author. These she perused during the present and succeeding _entr’actes_. Pressing Margaret’s hand, I walked round to the Gunton-Cresswells’s box to see what effect the act had had on them. One glance at their faces was enough. They were long and hard. “This is a real compliment,” I said to myself, for the whole party cut me dead. I withdrew, delighted. They had come, of course, to assist at my failure. I had often observed to Julian how curiously lacking I was in dramatic instinct, and Julian had predicted to Eva and her aunt and uncle a glorious fiasco. They were furious at their hopes being so egregiously disappointed. Had they dreamt of a success they would have declined to be present. Indeed, half-way through Act Two, I saw them creeping away into the night. The Barrel Club I discovered in the bar. As I approached, I heard Michael declare that “there’d not been such an act produced since his show was put on at——” He was interrupted by old Maundrell asserting that “the business arranged for valet reminded him of a story about Leopold Lewis.”