Page:Harvey O'Higgins--Don-a-dreams.djvu/359

 This was a point of view which he had not expected. He felt himself shrink from the figure of a Pall Mall dandy to something grotesque. "You have to put it on—the paint," he excused himself, his smile fading. "We'd look ghastly in this light, without it."

She frowned out at the sauntering chorus in the glare of the calcium light. "You look worse than ghastly with it!"

That remark struck him as rudely as a blow. When he spoke again it was to say, in a brave attempt to stand up to the situation: "I guess . . . it's our turn . . . to cross."

She hung back. "Do we have to go out there again? Do you think anyone in the audience might recognise me?"

"I'll walk on that side."

She crossed, stiff with embarrassment, her eyes fixed on the boards. "Oh dear," she said. "What do we have to do in the next scene?"

"Aren't you going to like it?" he asked, in such a disappointed tone that she replied: "I don't suppose it matters whether I like it or not. I'll do it, anyway."

They went to and fro, several times, in silence, Don crestfallen and gloomy, and she regarding her unfamiliar surroundings with critical distaste. "My gown doesn't even fit me," she complained. He did not confess that he thought she was as pretty as a bridesmaid in it. "They all look so shoddy," she said, a moment later. "It isn't a bit like what I thought it would be," And when he tried to turn the