"--one hundred and six carloads--"

"--paralysed the bulls--"

"--fifty thousand dollars--"

Then all at once the lights went up. The act was over.

Laura seemed only to come to herself some five minutes later. She
and Corthell were out in the foyer behind the boxes. Everybody was
promenading. The air was filled with the staccato chatter of a
multitude of women. But she herself seemed far away--she and Sheldon
Corthell. His face, dark, romantic, with the silky beard and
eloquent eyes, appeared to be all she cared to see, while his low
voice, that spoke close to her ear, was in a way a mere continuation
of the melody of the duet just finished.

Instinctively she knew what he was about to say, for what he was
trying to prepare her. She felt, too, that he had not expected to
talk thus to her to-night. She knew that he loved her, that
inevitably, sooner or later, they must return to a subject that for
long had been excluded from their conversations, but it was to have
been when they were alone, remote, secluded, not in the midst of a
crowd, brilliant electrics dazzling their eyes, the humming of the
talk of hundreds assaulting their ears. But it seemed as if these
important things came of themselves, independent of time and place,
like birth and death. There was nothing to do but to accept the
situation, and it was without surprise that at last, from out the
murmur of Corthell's talk, she was suddenly conscious of the words: