He had wandered about corridors and to and fro in his own room and in the wings, and even in the basement, as nervous as a lost cat or an author, and as self-conscious as a criminal who knows himself to be on the edge of discovery. It was a fact that he could not look people in the eyes. The reception of the first act had been fairly amiable, and he had suffered horribly as he listened for the applause. Catching sight of Carlo Trent in the distance of a passage, he had positively run away from Carlo Trent. The first entr'acte had seemed to last for about three months. Its nightmarish length had driven him almost to lunacy. The "feel" of the second act, so far as it mystically communicated itself to him in his place of concealment, had been better. At the end of the second fall of the curtain the applause had been enthusiastic. Yes, enthusiastic!
Curiously, it was the revulsion caused by this new birth of hope that, while the third act was being played, had driven him out of the theatre. His wild hope needed ozone. His breast had to expand in the boundless prairie of Piccadilly Circus. His legs had to walk. His arms had to swing.
Now he crossed the Circus again to his own pavement and gazed like a stranger at his own posters. On several of them, encircled in a scarlet ring, was the sole name of Rose Euclid--impressive! (And smaller, but above it, the legend "E. H. Machin. Sole proprietor.") He asked himself impartially, as his eyes uneasily left the poster and slipped round the Circus, deserted save by a few sinister and idle figures at that hour, "Should I have sent that interview to the papers, or shouldn't I? ... I wonder. I expect some folks would say on the whole I've been rather hard on Rose since I first met her! ... Anyhow, she's speaking up all right to-night!" He laughed shortly.
A newsboy floated up from the Circus bearing a poster with the name of Isabel Joy on it in large letters.
He did not care a fig for Isabel Joy's competition now.
And then a small door opened in the wall close by, and an elegant, cloaked woman came out on to the pavement. The door was the private door leading to the private box of Lord Woldo, owner of the ground upon which the Regent Theatre was built. The woman he recognised with confusion as Elsie April, whom he had not seen alone since the Azure Society's night.