The first time they met, though they didn’t know it, for they were unconscious of each other, was at The Immortal Hour, then playing to almost empty houses away at King’s Cross; but they both went so often, and the audience at that time was so conspicuous because there was so little of it and so much room to put it in, that quite soon people who went frequently got to know each other by sight, and felt friendly and inclined to nod and smile, and this happened too to Christopher and Catherine.
She first became aware of him on the evening of her fifth visit, when she heard two people talking just behind her before the curtain went up, and one said, sounding proud, ‘This is my eleventh time’; and the other answered carelessly, ‘This is my thirty-secondth’—upon which the first one exclaimed, ‘Oh, I say!’ with much the sound of a pricked balloon wailing itself flat, and she couldn’t resist turning her face, lit up with interest and amusement, to look. Thus she saw Christopher consciously for the first time, and he saw her.
