Page:Oppenheim--The cinema murder.djvu/305

Rh seated now well back in the box. Many of them followed her gaze, and the applause broke out again. Then there was silence. She paused before she spoke the first words of her part.

"Thank you so much," she said quietly.

It was a queer little episode. Beatrice gripped Philip's hand as she drew her chair back to his. There were tears in her eyes.

"How they love her, these people! And fancy their knowing about it, Philip, already! You ought to have shown yourself as the happy bridegroom. They were all looking up here. I wonder why men are so shy. I'm glad I have my new frock on. … Fancy being married only a few hours ago! Tell me how you are feeling, can't you, Philip? You sit there looking like a sphinx. You are happy, aren't you?"

"Happier, I think, than any man has a right to be," he answered, his eyes watching Elizabeth's every movement.

As the play proceeded, his silence only deepened. He went behind at the end of each act and spent a few stolen moments with Elizabeth. Life was a marvellous thing, indeed. Every pulse and nerve in his body was tingling with happiness. And yet, as he lingered for a moment in the vestibule of the theatre, before going back to his box at the commencement of the last act, he felt once more that terrible wave of depression, the ghostly uprising of his old terrors even in this supreme moment. He looked down from the panorama of flaring sky-signs into the faces of the passers-by along the crowded pavement. He had a sudden fancy that Dane was there,