Hyacinth and his companion took their seats with extreme promptitude before the curtain rose on _The Pearl of Paraguay_. Thanks to Millicent’s eagerness not to be late they encountered the discomfort which had constituted her main objection to going into the pit: they waited for twenty minutes at the door of the theatre, in a tight, stolid crowd, before the official hour of opening. Millicent, bareheaded and powerfully laced, presented a splendid appearance and, on Hyacinth’s part, gratified a youthful, ingenuous pride of possession in every respect save a tendency, while ingress was denied them, to make her neighbours feel her elbows and to comment loudly and sarcastically on the situation. It was more clear to him even than it had been before that she was a young lady who in public places might easily need a champion or an apologist. Hyacinth knew there was only one way to apologise for a “female” when the female was attached very closely and heavily to one’s arm, and was reminded afresh of how little constitutional aversion Miss Henning had to a row. He had an idea she might think his own taste ran even too little in that direction, and entertained visions of violent confused scenes in which he should in some way distinguish himself: he scarcely knew in what way and imagined himself more easily routing some hulking adversary by an exquisite application of the retort courteous than by flying at him with a pair of very small fists. By the time they had reached their places in the balcony she was rather flushed and a good deal ruffled; but she had composed herself in season for the rising of the curtain on the farce preceding the melodrama and which the pair had had no intention of losing. At this stage a more genial agitation took possession of her and she surrendered her sympathies to the horse-play of the traditional prelude. Hyacinth found it less amusing, but the theatre, in any conditions, was full of sweet deception for him. His imagination projected itself lovingly across the footlights, gilded and coloured the shabby canvas and battered accessories, losing itself so effectually in the fictive world that the end of the piece, however long or however short, brought with it something of the alarm of a stoppage of his personal life. It was impossible to be more friendly to the dramatic illusion. Millicent, as the audience thickened, rejoiced more largely and loudly, held herself as a lady, surveyed the place as if she knew all about it, leaned back and leaned forward, fanned herself with majesty, gave her opinion upon the appearance and coiffure of every woman within sight, abounded in question and conjecture and produced from her pocket a little paper of peppermint-drops of which under cruel threats she compelled Hyacinth to partake. She followed with attention, though not always with success, the complicated adventures of the Pearl of Paraguay through scenes luxuriantly tropical, in which the male characters wore