He asked if he should wait to act
as escort to Miss Girond and herself; but Nina said no; Miss Girond and
she went home every night by themselves in a four-wheeled cab; she knew
he must be tired after his long journey; and he must go away and get to
bed at once. So Lionel shook hands with her and left the theatre, and
walked carelessly and absently home to his lodgings in Piccadilly.
Well, he was glad to find his old friend and comrade, Nina, getting on
so well and so proud of her success and looking so charming in her new
part; and he guessed that she must have written to the grumbling old
Pandiani, and sent photographs of herself as Grace Mainwaring to Andrea
and Carmela and her other Neapolitan friends. But it was not of Nina
that he thought long, as he lay in the easy-chair and smoked, and
listened to the heavy murmur of the streets without. He had not got used
to London yet. The theatre seemed to him a great, glaring thing; the
lime-light an impertinent sham; even the applause of the delighted
audience somehow brutal and offensive. There was no repose, no
reticence, no self-respect and modesty about the whole affair; it was
all too violent; a fanfaronade; a coarse and ostentatious make-believe,
that seemed a kind of insult to a quiet mind.
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