As soon as the curtain went up she as promptly forgot her
companion. Watching her from the corner to which he had
returned, Darrow saw that great waves of sensation were
beating deliciously against her brain. It was as though
every starved sensibility were throwing out feelers to the
mounting tide; as though everything she was seeing, hearing,
imagining, rushed in to fill the void of all she had always
been denied.
Darrow, as he observed her, again felt a detached enjoyment
in her pleasure. She was an extraordinary conductor of
sensation: she seemed to transmit it physically, in
emanations that set the blood dancing in his veins. He had
not often had the opportunity of studying the effects of a
perfectly fresh impression on so responsive a temperament,
and he felt a fleeting desire to make its chords vibrate for
his own amusement.
At the end of the next act she discovered with dismay that
in their transit to the cafe she had lost the beautiful
pictured programme he had bought for her. She wanted to go
back and hunt for it, but Darrow assured her that he would
have no trouble in getting her another. When he went out in
quest of it she followed him protestingly to the door of the
box, and he saw that she was distressed at the thought of
his having to spend an additional franc for her. This
frugality smote Darrow by its contrast to her natural bright
profusion; and again he felt the desire to right so clumsy
an injustice.
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