rather hard upon the openings of less grandiose places.

A stout woman in purple raised an efficient elbow like an oar and dug it sharply into Stella's side.

"Oh, Stella, wouldn't it be awful if I fainted before the door opens!" whispered Eurydice.

"The doors are opening," said Stella. "People have begun to plunge with umbrellas."

The purple woman renewed her rowing motion; the patient queue expanded like a fan. Stella moved forward in the throng. She was pushed and elbowed, lifted and driven, but she never stopped being aware of delight. She watched the faces sweeping past her like petals on a stream; she flung down her half-crowns and seized her metal disks, dashing on and up the narrow stairs, with Eurydice fiercely struggling behind her like a creature in danger of drowning.

They sprang up and over the back ledges of the gallery on into the first row, breathless, gasping, and victorious.

"How horrible people are!" gasped Eurydice. "Dozens of brutal men have stepped on my toe. Your hat's crooked. Is anything worth this dreadful mingling with a mob?"

"Does one mingle really?" asked Stella, taking off her hat. "Only one's shoulders. Besides, I think I rather like mobs if they aren't purple and don't dig. I've just been thinking how dull it must be to walk into a box having done nothing but pay for it, and knowing, too, you are going to get it! The lady beside me has been to every opera this season. She sits on a camp-stool from two o'clock till eight with milk chocolate, and knows every one's name and all the motives and most of the scores. She's going to lend me this one. She says the excitement of not knowing whether she is going to get a front seat or not has never palled."

The great opera house filled slowly. There was splendor in it—the splendor put on for the occasion in the cheaper seats, and every-day splendor taking its place later and more expensively because it did not know how to be anything else but splendid.

Women's dresses that summer were made as much as possible to resemble underclothes. From the waist upwards filmy specimens of petticoat bodices appeared; there were wonderful jewels to be seen above them: immemorial family jewels, collars of rubies and pearls. The older the woman, the finer the jewels, and the more they looked like ancient mosaics glimmering archaically in early Roman churches.

 Prev. P 6/151 next