Page:The Star in the Window.pdf/106

96 "I'd like to—if you would," he replied humbly.

It was darkish inside. The lights had already been lowered. It was a long, narrow, little theater-space, with red-and-gold walls. Reba felt, rather than saw, that already it was packed with people. She followed the tall shadow of her escort, gropingly along the dim, gradually-descending aisle, and finally felt herself crowding by half a dozen or so human beings who were standing and pressing back to let her by them. Reba and her companion sat down finally in two narrow little seats, side by side, tucked up against the wall.

They sat there for two hours and a half, with scarcely a word to each other. The music, the close, smothery atmosphere, the proximity of so many vague breathing bodies about her, the ever-shifting, ever-changing conglomeration of events upon the screen before Reba, the oft-recurring stab of consciousness of the big piece of masculinity beside her, filled the girl with queer, new sensations of excitement and curiosity.

When finally the screen before her announced a huge "good night," and the audience began to stir and stand up, Reba felt as if she had been sitting there for weeks, with her sleeve slightly grazing the rough, burlapish material of the sailor's coat beside her. She seemed to wake from the dream only when the cool night air struck her forehead, and the familiar street-noises—trolley-cars and passing automobiles—made her realize that she had simply been to an evening moving-picture show, as Mamie did every week of her life.

Still she couldn't begin to talk immediately, nor the sailor either, evidently. For they were inarticulate