The ludicrous sublimity of such an ethical snarl reduced him to inanity. He stayed to dinner. Charity had not expected him to stop. She had planned an evening's excavation into her correspondence and had not changed her street dress. She was surprised and childishly delighted to have him with her--then childishly unhappy as she observed: “But you're all togged up. You're going out.” “No--well--that is--er--I was thinking you would like to see a show. I've got tickets.” “But it's late. I'm not dressed.” “What's the odds? You look all right. There's never anybody but muckers there Saturday nights. We'll miss it all if you stop to prink.” “All right,” she cried, and hurried through the dinner. He was glad at least that he had escaped a solemn evening at home. He could not keep awake at home. So they went to the theater; but there was not “nobody there,” as he had promised. Zada was there--alone in a box, dressed in her best, and wearing her East-Lynniest look of pathos. The coincidence was not occult. After several hours of brave battle with grief and a lonely dinner Zada had been faced by the appalling prospect of an evening alone. She remembered Cheever's purchase of the theater tickets, and she was startled with an intuition that he would take his wife in her place. Men are capable of such indecent economies. Zada was suffocated with rage at the possibility. She always believed implicitly in the worst things she could think of. If Peter Cheever dared do such a thing! And of course he would! Well, she would just find out! She threw a lonely wineglass at the fern-dish and smashed a decanter. Then she pushed off the table about a hundred dollars' worth of chinaware, and kicked her chair over backward. She had been famous for her back-kick in her public dancing-days. She howled to her maid and went into her wardrobe with both hands. She acted like a windmill in a dress-shop. Finally she came upon what she was looking for--the most ladylike theater-gown that ever combined magnificence with dazzling respectability. She made up her face like a lady's--it took some paint to do that. Meanwhile, her maid was telephoning speculators for a box. Zada arrived before Cheever and Charity did. She waited a long time, haughtily indifferent to the admiration she and her gown were achieving. At last she was punished and rewarded, revenged, and destroyed by the sight of Cheever coming down the aisle with Charity. They had to pause to let a fat couple rise, and they paused, facing Zada. Cheever caught her eye and halted, petrified, long enough for Charity to sit down, look up at him, follow the line of his gaze, and catch a full blast of Zada's beauty and of the fierce look she fastened on Cheever. Charity's eyes ran back on the almost visible clothes-line of that taut gaze and found Cheever wilting with several kinds of shame.