“They are very simple. It is plain that we cannot all sit together. It is equally plain that you cannot agree as to how the division is to be effected. I will solve the difficulty by telling you what are my own wishes in the matter. If you have any regard for me, whatever, you will observe them. Mr Purchase will sit in the stalls with Mr Hammond; Mr Carter with Mr Rumford; Major Tibbet will have his two seats in the upper circle to himself, and I will occupy the box--alone.” My proposal was not greeted with any greater warmth than I expected. I never saw five blanker looking faces. “Miss Norah, you’re not--you’re not--very complimentary to us all.” “I did not intend to be. I did not know you brought me out to pay you compliments.” “You’ve hit the nail in pointing out that you ought to consider the box as yours, and only yours. That’s right enough. We’re pretty idiots not to have seen it all along. But mayn’t some of us come up and talk to you now and then?” “I’d rather you didn’t. You might spoil my enjoyment of what was taking place upon the stage.” “Miss Norah!” “However, I have no desire to enjoy myself at your expense. So, when we reach the theatre, you go to your seats--and ask the coachman to drive me home.” As it happened, just then we reached the theatre. The door of the omnibus was opened, and, almost before I knew it, I was being handed out of it on to the pavement. It was all done so quickly that I really had no time to remonstrate. Still less to carry the trampling process to a further stage. Those five men had more ways of obtaining their own ends than one might suppose. And when a brougham dashed up, and the brown man sprang out of it, almost within a couple of feet of where I was standing, in a manner of speaking I lost my head completely. CHAPTER XVIII. BEFORE THE CURTAIN There is more depth in a man than one might imagine. I am not sure that that is exactly what I mean, but then I do not know how to describe just what I do mean; it sometimes is so difficult. One thing is certain, that a man does keep his presence of mind, and that not always in a manner which he has any reason to consider creditable. I am not able to state what happened with so much clearness as I should wish, or, indeed, with any clearness at all. Under the circumstances, to expect lucidity from me is out of the question. I know that I lost my presence of mind. I have a vague impression that during the time I was wholly without it, I was hurried somewhere, by some one, in a manner which was beyond my comprehension. When I regained it, at least in part--for I never did altogether during the entire remainder of that evening; that I do most solemnly assert--I was in a seat, with a stage in front of me, on which something was going on, and people all round me, who were apparently in a state of dissatisfaction with someone, about something. Voices were saying behind me: “Sit down in front!”