But before he could say any more, the lights were lowered again, and there was a hushing sound, and then the play proceeded.
"Oh, isn't it grand?" John said to his neighbour when the trial scene was over.
But his neighbour remained unmoved. "D'you mean to tell me," he said, "that man didn't know his wife when he saw her in the Coort?"
"That fellow what-you-may-call-him? The man that was married on the girl with the red dress on her!..."
"Aye. D'you mean to tell me that fellow didn't know her again, and him only just after leaving her!..."
John tried to explain. "It's a play," he said. "He's not supposed to recognize her!..."
"Och, what's the good of supposing a thing that couldn't be!" said John's neighbour. "Any man with half an eye in his head could have seen who she was. I wish I'd gone to the 'Lhambra. This is a damn silly play, this!"
John was horrified. "Silly," he said. "It's by Shakespeare!"
"I don't care who it's by," was the reply. "It's damn silly to let on a man doesn't know his own wife when he sees her. I suppose that's portry!" he sneered.
John did not answer, and his neighbour went on. "Well, if it is portry ... God help it, that's all!"
But John did not care whether Bassanio had recognized Portia in the court scene or not. He left the theatre in an exalted mood in which he had little thought for the realities. Next week he told himself, he would visit the Royal again. He would see two plays on the following Saturday, one in the afternoon and one in the evening. The bills for the following week's programme were already pasted on the walls of the theatre when he came out, and he risked the loss of his train by stopping to read one of them. _Romeo and Juliet_ was to be performed in the afternoon, and _Julius Caesar_ in the evening.
He hurried down Ann Street and across the Queen's Bridge, and reached the railway station just in time to catch his train; and all the way across the bridge and all the way home in the train, one sentence passed continually through his mind:
_...And her sunny locks Hang on her temples like a golden fleece._
While he ate his supper, he spoke to his mother and his uncles of his intention to open a bookshop.
"I'm going to start a bookshop," he said. "I made up my mind in Belfast to-day!"