The towel covered her face for a moment, before she dropped it to the floor beside her chair and stood. “I am famished! Will you take me to supper somewhere?”

“I shall be delighted.”

“I hope you are hungry too, or I shall be ashamed, for I am truly perishing. I never have more than a bite before a performance. I’m too nervous, and one must be at one’s best. We never know who may be out there!” She laughed and touched him quickly on the hand. “You haven’t said: Did you enjoy the performance at all, or was it agony? Tell me truly: Was I quite, utterly bad?”

“I liked it,” he said, aware of how little his answer measured the vehemence of her questions. “I liked it very much!” When she smiled and waited, he said with a shrug, “How can I say as to the performance? I could not take my eyes from you when you were on the stage; and when you were not, I waited.”

She smiled brilliantly, and he knew he had managed to say the right thing. It was half manners, but half meant, too. “I am better in other things,” she said modestly. “Mr. Conyngham is rehearsing us in The Merchant of Venice. He will do Shylock, of course. I shall try very hard to be good as Portia—another Portia altogether!”

“‘Dwell I but in the suburbs of your pleasure?’” he quoted, pleased with himself to remember the line. She applauded and laughed.

“You,” she declared, “should make an excellent Portia, no doubt of it!” She rose and walked around her chair. The scent of her sweat and perfume made him feel that he was expanding, his wrists thickening to fill his cuffs, his neck bulging to burst his collar, his whole body straining at the seams.

Using both hands, she turned his head. “You must continue to look that way,” she said behind him, “and not into the mirror, mind! While I—” Her pause suggested the action she was taking, which she then described. “Fold the toga so and so and so. Sandals off—there. I suppose you never have been in a room where a woman was dressing, excepting for Sarah. Or have there been—occasions?” She laughed. He heard the slippery sound of fabric, and disobeying her, looked into the mirror and saw that she had slipped a dress over her head and was pulling it down into place.