She wasn't absolutely hideous, that tall girl with the plume and the sword, who maneuvered always in front of the company--the lieutenant in charge.

Indeed, she was comely every way, slight and graceful, and there was a singular strong beauty in her face, which was enhanced by the rouge and the powder, and culminated in the laugh in her eyes and upon her lips--a laugh which meant enjoyment, excitement, exhilaration.
It grew upon Kendal that none of the chorus girls approached Elfrida in the abandon with which they threw themselves into the representation--that all the others were more conscious than she of the wide-hipped incongruity of their role.

To the man who beheld her there in an absolutely new world of light and color and course jest it seemed that she was perfectly oblivious of any other, and that her personality was the most aggressive, the most ferociously determined to be made the most of, on the stage.

As the chorus ceased a half-grown youth remarked to his companion in front, "But the orficer's the one, Dave! Ain't she fly!" and the words coming out distinctly in the moment of after-silence when the applause was over, set the pit laughing for two or three yards around.
Whereat Kendal, with an assortment of feelings which he took small pleasure in analyzing later, got up and went out.

People looked up angrily at him as he stumbled over their too numerous feet in doing so--he was spoiling a solo of some pathos by Mr.Golightly Ticke in the character of a princely refugee, a fur-trimmed mantle, and shoes with buckles.
Kendal informed himself with some severity that no possible motive could induce him to make any comment upon Miss Bell to Janet, and found it necessary to go down into Devonshire next day, where his responsibilities had begun to make a direct and persistent attack upon him.