From his recognition of these old schoolfellows Shelton turned to look at Halidome, who, having cleared his throat, was staring straight before him at the curtain.

Antonia's words kept running in her lover's head, "I don't like unhealthy people." Well, all these people, anyway, were healthy; they looked as if they had defied the elements to endow them with a spark of anything but health.

Just then the curtain rose.
Slowly, unwillingly, for he was of a trustful disposition, Shelton recognised that this play was one of those masterpieces of the modern drama whose characters were drawn on the principle that men were made for morals rather than morals made by men, and he watched the play unfold with all its careful sandwiching of grave and gay.
A married woman anxious to be ridded of her husband was the pivot of the story, and a number of scenes, ingeniously contrived, with a hundred reasons why this desire was wrong and inexpedient, were revealed to Shelton's eyes.

These reasons issued mainly from the mouth of a well-preserved old gentleman who seemed to play the part of a sort of Moral Salesman.

He turned to Halidome and whispered: "Can you stand that old woman ?" His friend fixed his fine eyes on him wonderingly.
"What old woman ?" "Why, the old ass with the platitudes!" Halidome's countenance grew cold, a little shocked, as though he had been assailed in person.
"Do you mean Pirbright ?" he said.