If the dentist noticed anything amiss, he was tactful and launched into an exchange of nonsense with Amy which lasted quite to the theater's garish door. Once within, Jean forgot that she had a past which might not be fearlessly bared for any eye. Amy squeezed her arm happily as they passed directly into the body of the house instead of mounting the stairs familiar to her feet when she paid her own way; and to the squeeze she added a look of transport and awe when, following the usher, they skirted the orchestra and entered a narrow passage near the stage. "We've got _box_ seats!" she whispered huskily. "They couldn't have cost him less than a dollar apiece!" Jean had a moment of timidity begotten of a vivid recollection of two cramped pigeon-roosts, always untenanted, which flanked the advertisement-littered drop-curtain of the Shawnee Springs Grand Opera House, but was speedily reassured to find that she need endure no such lonely distinction here. These boxes were many, and they held many, their own being shared by half a dozen persons besides themselves, while the hangings were so disposed that she could be as secluded as she pleased, yet miss nothing of the play. The play! It was a series of plays, with endless other wonderful things, too. Nothing that she had conceived resembled this ever-shifting spectacle of laughter and tears. For there were tears--real ones! Jean had often jeered at girls who cried over novels, while those whom a play, or at least the Shawnee Springs brand of drama, could move to tears, were even less comprehensible; yet to-night, when a simple little piece dealing merely with an unhappy man and wife who, resolved to go their separate ways, callously divided their poor belongings until they reached a dead baby's shoes, ran its course, she found her breath short and her cheeks wet. She was at first rather ashamed of this weakness, attributing it to her refuge nerves, but she presently heard Amy sob, and, looking round, perceived handkerchiefs fluttering throughout the darkened house. Paul, on her other side, hemmed once or twice, and she supposed him disgusted with all this ado over a baby who never existed, but when the lights went up suddenly she discovered that his eyes were moist, too. She liked this trait in Paul. She was glad, furthermore, that he did not scoff afterward, as did some men whom the acting had moved. It seemed to her a wholesome sign that he had the courage of his sympathies; one could probably rely upon that type of man. His mental alertness also impressed her anew. For him none of the quips of the Irish or German comedians were recondite, and he could explain in a nutshell the most bewildering feats of the Japanese adepts at sleight of hand. She wondered not a little at this special knowledge, and when they left the theatre he told her that it had been his chief boyish ambition to become a magician.