We arrived there towards the end of the first ballet. Carlotta, as soon as she had taken her seat, leaned both elbows on the front of the box and surrendered her senses to the stage. Pasquale talked to Judith. Wishing for a few moments alone I left the box and sauntered moodily along the promenade behind the First Circle. The occupants were either leaning over the partitions and watching the spectacle or sitting with drink before them at the little marble tables at the back. The gaudy, gilded, tobacco-smoke and humanity-filled theatre seemed to be unreal, the stage but a phantom cloud effect. I wondered why I, a creature from the concrete world, was there. I had an insane impulse to fly from it all, to go out into the streets, and wander, wander for ever, away from the world. I was walking along the promenade, lost in this lunacy, when I stumbled against a fellow-promenader and the shock brought me to my senses. It was an elderly, obese Oriental wearing a red fez. He had a long nose and small, crafty eyes, and was deeply pitted with smallpox. I made profuse apologies and he accepted them with suavity. It then occurring to me that I was he having in a discourteous and abjectly absurd manner, I made my way back to the box. I drew a chair to Judith’s side. “You are giving me a captivating evening,” she said, with a smile. “Whom are you captivating?” I asked, idly jesting. “Pasquale?” “You are cruel,” whispered Judith, with a flicker of her eyelids. I flushed, ashamed, not having weighed the significance of my words. All I could say was: “I beg your pardon,” whereat Judith laughed mirthlessly. I relapsed into silence. Turn followed turn on the stage. While the curtain was lowered Carlotta sank back with a little sigh of enjoyment, and nodded brightly at me. “Do you remember,” she said, turning to me, at a fresh fall of the curtain, “when you brought me first? I said I should like to live here. Wasn’t I silly?” She turned again, then suddenly rose to her feet and staggered back to the back of the box, pointing outward, with an expression of wild terror on her face. “Hamdi--he’s down there--he saw me.” I sprang to her assistance and put my arm around her. “Nonsense, dear,” said I. But Pasquale, looking around the house, cried: “By Jove! she’s right. I would recognise the old villain a thousand years hence in Tartarus. There he is.” I left Carlotta, and the first person my eyes rested upon in the stalls was my obese but suave Oriental, regarding the box with an impassive countenance. “That’s Hamdi Effendi, all right,” said Pasquale. Carlotta clutched my arms as I joined her at the back of the box. “Oh, take me away, Seer Marcous, take me away,” she moaned piteously. My poor child was white and shaken with fear. I again put my arm round her. “No harm can happen to you, dear,” I said, soothingly. “Oh, darling Seer Marcous, take me home,” cried Carlotta.