Lancaster put in, "One of the men at the club declared that it was the only thing that had given him real emotion for--oh, years."
"He must have been a very blasé creature," said one of the other women.
Their further conversation was interrupted by the rising of the curtain. When it came down again there was a general movement toward the foyers. Some of the tall and pale young men strolled out to smoke cigars and talk of the boxing match that was going to come off at the club in a day or so. With much fluttering of fans and swishing of skirts the angular girls betook themselves from Mrs. Stewart's box to see if they "could see any of the other girls." Mrs. Stewart and Dick Lancaster were left in sole possession. He took a chair beside her and looked over into the stalls.
"Only fair," she said, noting his visual measurement of the size of the audience.
"Yes. These people don't want the New. They want 'Faust' and 'Aida,' and they think 'Tannhäuser' is the very last in music. It will be years before they see the gem-like beauty of this new Italian school."
"That is why. The old things are the best, if you only go far enough into the past. We are never really modern, we are merely old in a new way."
"Do you know--" she leaned her white elbow on the cushioned chair-back and placed her forefinger just under her ear, so that from the elbow up her arm formed a white, beautiful rest for the attractive face, and looking young Lancaster smilingly in the eyes, tapped her foot caressingly to the floor--"do you know that I think I shall have to cut you off my list very soon? You have--h'm--changed a great deal in the few months I have known you. You occasionally make speeches that sound almost cynical. You were always clever; you always talked brightly, but you never used to believe some of the sharp things you said; now I think you are beginning to. I liked you because you were different; you are not different any more, at least not different in the same way. You will never be as stupid as most of the others; but I am afraid, too, that you will never be quite as genuine as you were."
He sighed as he looked at her. He smiled very faintly as he answered, "Yes, I am afraid you are right. I am not as I was." His gaze swept out over the stalls, the crowded foyer, the brilliance everywhere. "But how could I have done anything else than let all this affect me a little? I am pliable, I suppose, and I bend easily to the wind. I came here to taste life. As soon as I began to sip the cup I found that I was going to like it immensely. I trod the way of the world that I might see what manner of men walk there, and what sort of a road it was. Presently, I found that I liked that path so much that I preferred it to the bypaths of solitude and asceticism. And what has it mattered as long as I have not neglected the work there is for me to do? No one can say I have changed in that respect. I work harder than ever. It's not fair of you to upbraid me. A great deal of it is your own doing."