The news soon spread through the company. A “call” for rehearsal on Monday morning for the chorus and those of the principals concerned in the change was posted up. He felt himself a person of some importance. McKay congratulated him; and Blake, although he said, “You swells get all the fat,” spoke by no means enviously. The others cracked jokes and suggested drinks all round, which, being sent for by Joyce, were consumed in the dressing-room. Annie Stevens squeezed his hand, during their dance together, and whispered a word of pleasure. He had no idea that so infinitesimal a success could have masqueraded as such a triumph. He longed to get back to his room to write it all to Yvonne.
At the stage-door, after the performance, he met Annie Stevens, who had hurried through her dressing.
“I’m glad for your sake, but I’m sorry for my own,” she said, after they had walked a few steps.
“Why, what difference can it make to you?” asked Joyce laughing.
“I shall have to play and sing with somebody else.”
“True. I was forgetting. Yes, it will seem funny. I shall miss you too.”
“I don’t believe you care one bit,” said the girl.
To acquiesce would have been rude. He answered her with vague regrets. She interrupted him with a laugh in which was the faintest note of scorn.
“Oh, you’re very glad to get rid of me, and the stupid kissing and everything. You won’t have to give any one a Chinese kiss now. And they were very Chinese, you know.”
“An English kiss would have been out of the picture,” said Joyce.
“We’re not in the picture now,” she said softly.
Joyce felt that he was doing something very foolish, perhaps dangerous. He had never had the remotest fancy for allowing his companionship with her to degenerate into a flirtation. But what could he do? He bent down and kissed her.
There was an awkward silence for a few yards, which she broke at last in her irrelevant way.
“I should so like a glass of port wine tonight.”
“So should I,” said Joyce, cheerfully. “Or something like it. We ’ll go into the Crown yonder.”
Two or three times before they had had a glass together on their way home. To-night, therefore, the suggestion seemed natural. They entered the private bar of the public-house, and Joyce ordered the liquors. Only one young man was there, reading a sporting paper on a high stool. It was a quiet place, with the view beyond the counter down the bar cut off by a ground-glass screen, through a low space under which the customers were served.