When we reached the opera-house, the second act was over; and, on the way to our box, we ran the gauntlet of a dozen friends, who invited us to meals, and of a hundred staring strangers, who turned to their neighbours and whispered: “There’s Lady Barbara!” with the mingled triumph and awe which the English display when they recognize any idol of the illustrated papers. “One gets used to anything, even the manners of the well-bred,” I murmured, as we struggled towards the stairs. “If any one else asks us to lunch, I shall say we’ve given up eating. . . . Oh, I _must_ speak to Marion! You go on.” I ploughed slowly into an open space by the entrance to the pit-tier boxes, then came to an involuntary standstill. Face to face, too near for either of us to escape, I found Eric Lane smoking a cigarette and looking over my shoulder to the place where Barbara was talking to Mrs. Shelley. Unless she had already seen him and was lingering behind till I had made myself a screen, they must meet in another moment. Eric never had much colour to lose, but even his lips now seemed bloodless. When our eyes met, I could not have said which was the more uncomfortable. I enquired after his father, I believe; and he asked me, as he had been in Japan at the time of our wedding, to accept his belated good wishes now. “When are we to have another play?,” I asked. “This autumn, I hope,” he answered. “Good for that. Well, Eric, I little thought in the old Phoenix Club days that we were entertaining a genius unawares.” “They were g-good days,” he sighed. Then there was a pause; and the cordiality which old habit had brought to life wilted. As he glanced in Barbara’s direction, I fancy he was charging her with making our friendship impossible; this second sight of her seemed to incapacitate him; and we stood stockishly silent. When she joined us, there was, indeed, a smile on either side, a high and rather breathless “Oh, how do you do?” Then we hurried to our box; and Eric strolled across the hall. His hand was shaking as he tried to relight his cigarette; and the hollow eyes and cadaverous cheeks seemed ten years older for the ten seconds’ encounter. Was it a presentiment of this meeting that had unnerved Barbara? I had no time to speak before we were surrounded by a new throng. It was her first appearance at Covent Garden; and from the boxes and stalls we had opera-glasses trained upon us until I seemed to be looking at a tank of lobsters; a queue formed outside our door and we were flattened against the side of the box. The acclamation was not confined within a ring of our friends: I felt the atmosphere of the whole house warming in the greatest tribute to personality that I have ever seen. “I watched you coming in to-night,” Dr. Gaisford told her at the end. “It was like the sun breaking through. . . . How are you, my dear child? As you don’t come to see me professionally, I hope that means you’re well and happy?”