The piece was a West End success so brilliant that even if you belonged to the intellectual despisersof the British theatre you could not hold up your head in the world unless you had seen it; even forsuch as you it was undeniably a success of curiosity at least.The stage scene flamed extravagantly with crude orange and viridian light, a rectangle of bedazzlingillumination; on the boards, in the midst of great width, with great depth behind them and archingheight above, tiny squeaking figures ogled the primeval passion in gesture and innuendo. From thearc of the upper circle convergent beams of light pierced through gloom and broke violently on thisgroup of the half-clad lovely and the swathed grotesque. The group did not quail. In fullest publicityit was licensed to say that which in private could not be said where men and women meet, and thatwhich could not be printed. It gave a voice to the silent appeal of pictures and posters and illustratedweeklies all over the town; it disturbed the silence of the most secret groves in the vast, undiscovered hearts of men and women young and old. The half-clad lovely were protected fromthe satyrs in the [8] audience by an impalpable screen made of light and of ascending music in whichstrings, brass, and concussion exemplified the naïve sensuality of lyrical niggers. The guffaw which, occasionally leaping sharply out of the dim, mysterious auditorium, surged round the silhouettedconductor and drove like a cyclone between the barriers of plush and gilt and fat cupids on to thestage-this huge guffaw seemed to indicate what might have happened if the magic protection ofthe impalpable screen had not been there.Behind the audience came the restless Promenade, where was the reality which the stage reflected.There it was, multitudinous, obtainable, seizable, dumbly imploring to be carried off. The stage, verydaring, yet dared no more than hint at the existence of the bright and joyous reality. But there it was, under the same roof.Christine entered with Madame Larivaudière. Between shoulders and broad hats, as through atelescope, she glimpsed in the far distance the illusive, glowing oblong of the stage; then thesilhouetted conductor and the tops of instruments; then the dark, curved concentric rows ofspectators. Lastly she took in the Promenade, in which she stood. She surveyed the Promenade witha professional eye. It instantly shocked her, not as it might have shocked one ignorant of humannature and history, but by reason of its frigidity, its constraint, its solemnity, its pretence. In oneglance she embraced all the figures, moving or stationary, against the hedge of shoulders in front andagainst the mirrors behind-all of them: the programme girls, the cigarette girls, the chocolate [9]girls, the cloak-room girls, the waiters, the overseers, as well as the vivid courtesans and theirclientèle in black, tweed, or khaki. With scarcely an exception they all had the same strange look, thesame absence of gesture. They were northern, blond, self-contained, terribly impassive.