While the auditorium emptied and filled again, Julia, her head erect, her hands quiet, talked on--as though the lack of Dot's usual visit to her box were of no moment. Ronnie, every fiber in him furious, played up to her. But Aliette could not speak. In her, social instincts were at war with conscience. Feeling herself definitely in the wrong toward society, yet definitely in the right toward her own soul, feeling terribly afraid, yet terribly courageous, striving desperately to wrench out the iron of resentment from her mind, striving piteously to forget the hurt of the wound which Mary O'Riordan had dealt her, she played her game in dumb show. And furtively, fearfully, as the music for the second act began, she watched for Hector's return. But Hector did not return. Even when the house lights went out and the curtain rose again, Aliette could see that his stall remained empty. Subconsciously she knew that he had fled the theater. The second act of "Khorassan" dragged to its undramatic climax. Once again those three faced the eyes of the audience. Now, more than ever, it seemed to Aliette, still sitting rigid in the forefront of Julia's box, as though all eyes were hostile, as though the entire house, and with it her entire social world, had decided to ostracize them. All through that overlong _entr'acte_, she sat speechless; her brown pupils hard and bright; her white shoulders squared above the black sequined dress; her pale face, her red lips set to an almost sullen determination. And, as the _entr'acte_ ended, those hard brown pupils fell to devisaging Mary O'Riordan. Till, visibly ill at ease, the cow-eyes under Mary's mop of gold hair turned away. But it gave Aliette no pleasure to realize that, hurt, she had retaliated. 6 Everybody in front of the curtain and everybody behind the curtain knew--as it fell--that Patrick O'Riordan's poetic drama, "Khorassan," was a proved failure. Nevertheless, the audience, as is the polite custom of first-night audiences, applauded; and called on the author, white-faced in the glare of the footlights, for a speech. "And in the morning," thought Julia Cavendish satirically, "we shall read of the great service rendered by Patrick O'Riordan via Letchingbury's bank-account, to art; and of the pressing need for more revivals of the poetic drama."