"An inch or two of stocking. Of thick, black stocking."

"Are you sure it's not a bluestocking? And are you sure it's a stocking, and not a bloomer?"

"Oh, so you have something against bluestockings and against the courageous Miss Bloomer?"

"I am a thoroughly modern man, and if I had my way, every woman would be as liberated as the bluest of the bluestockings, and God bless them all. But you can't blame the majority of men for-"

"I certainly canblame them. And I do! And as for you... Ha!"

"Ha?"

"You claim to be a modern man. And yet, even while rushing to save your brother from the clutches of the sweetest, gentlest little romantic fool in the world, you took time to notice exactly how many inches of ankle I revealed while alighting from the cab. How like a man! Men like you are the reason I became an actress."

He blinked and pressed his hand to his chest. "I am the reason you became-?"

"I'd rather not discuss it further." She turned away from him and looked fixedly out at the horizontal blur of snow streaking across the patch of gaslight. She focused back to the surface of the window and saw his reflected face, his eyes looking at her with intensity.

"Well? What is it?" she asked the window.

"Are you really an actress?"

"Does that seem so impossible?"

"No, but... I'm in theater myself. I'm a playwright. And also," he added with a dismissive shrug, "an occasional critic for newspapers."

"Critic, eh? I might have known."

"Meaning?"

"That I might have known."

"Where have you worked? Perhaps I have seen you. I may even have reviewed you."

"I am with Andre Antoine's Theatre Libre," she said with pride.

"Oh," he said with a falling note. "Strindberg, Zola, Ibsen, all that lot. Plays of 'social significance.' " There was a shudder in his voice.

"You disapprove of social drama? Or is it significance that frightens you?"

"I disapprove of the phony realism. Of the way the actors mutter and scratch themselves and turn their backs on the audience. That's every bit as affected in its way as the most smoke-cured of the hams rolling their 'r's' and tearing a scene to tatters with their bare teeth. What have you appeared in?"

"Oh... lots of things."

"Such as?"

"Well, I was in Hedda Gabler,for one. And A Doll's House.And Therese Raquin."

"I saw the Theatre Libre production of Hedda Gabler.In fact, I wrote a review of it. But I don't remember you."

"I didn't say I played a major role in Hedda."

"Even in a supporting role, I'd remember that splendid mane of cupric hair, and that sassy uptilted nose."

"Well, my part was... well, actually, the director wanted me to concentrate on the internalaspects of my character. On what was seething beneath the surface so powerfully that to express it in words would be redundant."

"I see. You're saying you didn't have any lines."

"I'm saying that I played an intensely sensitive young serving girl who was aware of the family's innermost suffering. I reflected my sensitivity and awareness to the audience, and I believe they felt my.... ah... my..."

"I see. Have you had anyspeaking parts?"

"Well... no. Not as such.I'm still learning my craft. It's my first season with Andre."

"Great heavens! Your brilliant career with 'Andre' is barely off the ground, and yet you're willing to let it slump while you run off to the Pyrenees to save your poor consumptive sister from the fate you claim is worse than the fate worse than death."

"I find your snide comments neither amusing nor illuminating. I can see why you chose to become a critic."

"I write reviews only to broaden my knowledge of theater... and to earn a bit of money. As I told you, I am a playwright."

"Oh? And what have you written?"

"Oh... dozens of things."

"Such as?"

"Well... for instance, I permitted the Gaiete Theatre to perform one of my pieces just last month."

"The Gaiete? But they do nothing but low farces."

"I'm not ashamed to admit that my play was a farce. A tightly written, uproariously funny farce, as a matter of fact."

"And you have the cheek to turn your nose up at social realism. You who offer nothing but asinine romps, improbable coincidences, mistaken identity, and trite screen-scenes featuring wayward husbands caught hiding from avenging wives, all this crammed into three frantic acts of babble and confusion!"

"That shows how much you know! My play was only one act!"

"Ah, so you write one-act curtain warmers to get idiot audiences in the mood for the realfarces that will follow. And you dare to sneer at plays that deal with human suffering and social issues and the criminal oppression of women! Humph!"

"Actually, nobody really says humph. It's just a literary convention."

"Well, I say humph. Especially when I'm talking to writers of trivial..." She frowned. "My sister is not consumptive. What on earth gave you thatidea?"

"Er-r-r-r," he struggled to catch up with this lurch of subject. "Oh, I see where you are. Well, I deduced that your sister had weak lungs because the waters of Cambo-les-Bains are famous for improving two conditions: consumption and what are euphemistically called 'Woman's Problems'. Since this latter tends to befall mostly women of 'a certain age' with little to occupy their overactive imaginations, I naturally assumed that-"

"That would be Aunt Adelaide."

"...Aunt Adelaide?"

"My father's sister. She came to look after him after our mother died. But lately she's become a little... none of your business. Sophie accompanied Aunt Adelaide to the spa for a course of the waters to treat her... ailments."

"Sophie being your sister?"

"Aren't you listening? My father could hardly let his silly sister go down there all alone. She's an even greater romantic than our Sophie. You know, I'll bet anything that Aunt Adelaide is in on this plot of your brother's to snatch poor Sophie from her family. I'm starving."

"Er-r-r-r." That lurch again. "Ah! Well, the steward said that they-"

"Don't mention that insinuating, low-minded worm to me."

"All right, but the Unmentionable Invertebrate said that they would begin serving in fifteen minutes, and that was..." he fished out his watch and snapped it open "...twenty minutes ago. I assume you'd rather not dine with a crass purveyor of trivial farces, so I'll await your return before-"

"Nonsense. We'll dine together."

He was surprised... but oddly pleased. "So, I guess I'm not all that bad after all."

"Your badness has nothing to do with it. I have no money."

"Oh."

"Shall we go?"

"Ah... by all means."

They were conducted to a table at the far end of the 'American' dining car, which obliged them to walk a gauntlet of frank curiosity mixed with-something else. She called up a mental snapshot of these very faces peering out at them as they dashed frantically for the train, and suddenly she recognized what this something else was: complicity. Benevolent complicity! As we foretold it would, a tingle of embarrassment rushed up the back of her neck into her hair at the realization that these romantic busybodies took it for granted that they were eloping lovers rushing off to their honeymoon. Probably leaving irate parents and jilted fiances in their madcap wake. Oh, the humiliation of it! Actress that she was, it was not having an audience that she minded, it was the absurdity of her role in this vulgar farce.

Man that he was, he had noticed nothing.

She sat in rigid dignity, her lips compressed, her attention riveted on the menu, but painfully conscious of smiles, whispers, and nudges out on the defocused edges of her peripheral vision. She looked up to see him nod politely at two smiling women sitting at the table opposite, beaming at them. Sisters, obviously; unmarried, probably; and nosy without a doubt. His social smile dissolved under her disapproving frown. "What's wrong?"