"Of course one couldn't let this sort of thing go on without, anyway, trying to see about it. In the first _entr'acte_ I made a dash for that ginger-haired old boy by the box-office and got him to send a page-boy with a note. It naturally wasn't all done in a breath, for the note had obviously to be a note of the finer sort, it had to convey a very particular impertinence which wasn't an impertinence simply because it was so particular. You must know what I mean.... Oh, it had to be just right! You must be neither too casual nor too ingratiating. You must not write it either in clogs or in carpet slippers, but in a happy mean, in the most exquisite pumps that were ever contrived by Lobb. You may think I'm exaggerating, but really I sweated blood over those few lines--how, how did one know that one might not miss the best thing of a lifetime by a _gauche_ word! "I sent it off at last--the central idea of it being that I greatly desired the honour of her presence at supper, while apologising for my monstrous cheek in asking for her presence at same, and that I was sitting in the third seat from the end of the third row of the stalls.... Which, by the way, reminds me! It always pays to take a stall, for imagine writing to a marvellous woman who may have spent her maid's quarterly wages on a box and saying that you are sitting in the dress-circle--the dress-circle, mind you! It sounds so odd--anyway, I breathe again when I think that I might have missed a perfect thing by sitting in the dress-circle. One isn't being a snob, but an opportunist. "I received my answer in the second interval ... amazed, excited. Yes, she was a foreigner by her writing; just a couple of cold lines saying that I could call at her box at the end of the revue. "Preliminaries are of course always tiresome, but these were perhaps less so than most, simply because one was so in the air about her, and so much readier than usual to be appreciative.... And, mind you, rightly, as it proved. She spoke English charmingly well, but just incorrectly enough to be recognisable as a 'distinguished foreigner.' "Almost on my entrance she began to apologise for her 'rudeness' at neither accepting nor declining my invitation to supper in her note. "'But let's be amazingly candid,' I suggested, on her note. 'You wished, of course, to have a look at your host, before--' "'But no, I wished to have a look at my guest,' she said, quickly. And by the slightest flutter in her voice I guessed for the first time that she was frightfully shy. Personally, I never felt so unattractive in my life, all prickly hot and affected--as one gets, you know. "'You must understand that I have a charming house,' she explained. 'And if you will not think me too insincere, I will say that I should be very flattered if you will take supper with me....'