"Oh!" he replied lightly, with a laugh. "Just about what you’d expect. Of course you know what a first-night audience always is. Too generous. And ours was, particularly. Miss April saw to that. She had the Azure Society behind her, and she was determined to help Rose Euclid. However, I should say it was all right--I should say it was quite all right. I told you it was a gamble, you know." When Nellie, dressing, said that she considered she ought to go back home that day, he offered no objection. Indeed he rather wanted her to go. Not that he had a desire to spend the whole of his time at the theatre, unhampered by provincial women in London. On the contrary, he was aware of a most definite desire not to go to the theatre. He lay in bed and watched with careless curiosity the rapid processes of Nellie’s toilette. He had his breakfast on the dressing-table (for he was not at Wilkins’s, neither at the Grand Babylon). Then he helped her to pack, and finally he accompanied her to Euston, where she kissed him with affectionate common sense and caught the twelve five. He was relieved that nobody from the Five Towns happened to be going down by that train. As he turned away from the moving carriage, the evening papers had just arrived at the bookstalls. He bought the four chief organs--one green, one yellowish, one white, one pink--and scanned them self-consciously on the platform. The white organ had a good heading: "Re-birth of the intellectual drama in London. What a provincial has done. Opinions of the leading men." Two columns altogether! There was, however, little in the two columns. The leading men had practised a sagacious caution. They, like the press as a whole, were obviously waiting to see which way the great elephantine public would jump. When the enormous animal had jumped, they would all exclaim: "What did I tell you?" The other critiques were colourless. At the end of the green critique occurred the following sentence: "It is only fair to state, nevertheless, that the play was favourably received by an apparently enthusiastic audience." "Nevertheless!" ... "Apparently!" Edward Henry turned the page to the theatrical advertisements. [Illustration: Theatrical advertisement] Unreal! Fantastic! Was this he, Edward Henry? Could it be still his mother’s son? Still--"matinées every Wednesday and Saturday." "_Every_ Wednesday and Saturday." That word implied and necessitated a long run, anyhow a run extending over months. That word comforted him. Though he knew as well as you do that Mr. Marrier had composed the advertisement, and that he himself was paying for it, it comforted him. He was just like a child. VIII. "I say, Cunningham’s made a hit!" Mr. Marrier almost shouted at him as he entered the managerial room at the Regent. "Cunningham? Who’s Cunningham?"