But the beautiful Olympian lightly brushed aside our
objections.
"They don't belong here," she declared loftily. "They're freshmen--and
they only bought quarter seats."
Then, as the guilty pair seemed to hesitate, she summoned them with a
compelling gesture and the command: "Come out!"
At this they arose meekly enough, whereupon we redoubled our protests.
But to no purpose. The Titian-tinted creature was relentless. Our pleas
figured no more in her scheme of things than if they had been babblings
in an unknown tongue. To add to our discomfiture, a large part of the
audience seemed to have perceived the nature of our dilemma, and was
giving us amused attention.
It was a crisis; and in a crisis--especially one in which a member of
the so-called gentle sex is involved--I have learned to look to my
companion. He understands women. He has often told me so. And now, by
his action, he proved it. What he did was to turn and flee, and I fled
with him; nor did we pause until we were safely hidden away in humble
twenty-five cent seats at the rear of the chapel, in the shadow of the
overhanging gallery.
It is not my intention to write an extended criticism of the
performance. For one thing, I witnessed only a fragment of it, and for
another, though I once acted for a brief period as dramatic critic on a
New York newspaper, I was advised by my managing editor to give up
dramatic criticism, and I have followed his advice.
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