The sound of music came to him as he entered the theatre--light, measured music suggestive of tiny streams, toy lambs, and painted shepherdesses. It sounded singularly inappropriate to his mood--as inappropriate as the theatre itself with its gay gilding, its pale tones of pink and blue. It was the setting of a different world--a world of laughter, light thoughts, and shallow impulses, in which he had no part. He halted for an instant outside the box to which the attendant had shown him; then, as the door was thrown open, he straightened himself resolutely and stepped forward. It was the interval between the first and second acts. The box was in shadow, and Loder's first impression was of voices and rustling skirts, broken in upon by the murmur of frequent, amused laughter; later, as his eyes grew accustomed to the light, he distinguished the occupants--two women and a man. The man was speaking as he entered, and the story he was relating was evidently interesting from the faint exclamations of question and delight that punctuated it in the listeners' higher, softer voices. As the new-comer entered they all three turned and looked at him. “Ah, here comes the legislator!” exclaimed Leonard Kaine. For it was he who formed the male element in the party. “The Revolutionary, Lennie!” Lillian corrected, softly. “Bramfell says he has changed the whole face of things--” She laughed softly and meaningly as she closed her fan. “So good of you to come, Jack!” she added. “Let me introduce you to Miss Esseltyn; I don't think you two have met. This is Mr. Chilcote, Mary--the great, new Mr. Chilcote.” Again she laughed. Loder bowed and moved to the front of the box, nodding to Kaine as he passed. “It's only for an hour,” he explained to Lillian. “I have an appointment for eleven.” He turned and bowed to the third occupant of the box--a remarkably young and well-dressed girl with wide-awake eyes and a retrousse nose. “Only an hour! Oh, how unkind! How should I punish him, Lennie?” Lillian looked round at Kaine with a lingering, caressing glance. He bent towards her in quick response and answered in a whisper. She laughed and replied in an equally low tone. Loder, to whom both remarks had been inaudible dropped into the vacant seat beside Mary Esseltyn. He had the unsettled feeling that things were not falling out exactly as he had calculated. “What is the play like?” he hazarded as he looked towards his companion. At all times social trivialities bored him; to-night they were intolerable. He had come to fight, but all at once it seemed that there was no opponent. Lillian's attitude disturbed him; her careless graciousness, her evident ignoring of him for Kaine, might mean nothing--but also it might mean much. So he speculated as he put his question and spurred his attention towards the girl's answer; but with the speculation came the resolve to hold his own--to meet his enemy upon whatever ground she chose to appropriate.