"Or perhaps you know somebody who can take us there without
any preliminaries."
"Nay," returned Philip, after a moment's thought, "there will be other
people there. I shouldn't like strangers to see--you understand. We
shall wait till the play is over, and then go to the door where the
players come out. 'Twill take her some time to dress for going
home--we can't miss her that way."
I sympathised with his feelings against making their meeting a scene
for the amusement of frivolous lookers-on, and we waited patiently
enough. Neither of us could have told, when the play was over, what
was the story it presented. Even Madge's speeches we heard with less
sense of their meaning than emotion at the sound of her voice. If this
was the case with me, how much more so, as I could see by side-glances
at his face, was it with Philip! Between the acts, we had little use
for conversation. One of our thoughts, though neither uttered it, was
that, despite the reputation that play-actresses generally bore, a
woman _could_ live virtuously by the profession, and in it, and that
several women since the famous Mrs. Bracegirdle were allowed to have
done so. 'Twas only necessary to look at our Madge, to turn the
possibility in her case into certainty.
When at last the play was ended, we forced our way through the
departing crowd so as to arrive almost with the first upon the scene
of waiting footmen, shouting drivers, turbulent chair-men, clamorous
boys with dim lanterns or flaming torches, and such attendants upon
the nightly emptying of a playhouse.
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