midnight
I wore my soft satin without any ornaments , and my husband merely put scarlet facings on the lapels of his evening coat , but Alma was clad in a gorgeous dress of old gold , with Oriental skirts which showed her limbs in front but had a long train behind , and made her look like a great vampire bat . It was eleven o'clock before we reached the theatre , but already the auditorium was full , and so well had the artists done their work of decoration , making the air alive with floating specks of many-coloured lights , like the fire-flies at Nemi , that the scene was one of enchantment . It was difficult to believe that on the other side of the walls was the street , with the clanging electric bells and people hurrying by with their collars up , for the night was cold , and it had begun to rain as we came in , and one poor woman , with a child under her shawl , was standing by the entrance trying to sell evening papers . I sat alone in a box on the ground tier while Alma and my husband and their friends were below on the level of the _ poltroni _ -LRB- the stalls -RRB- that had been arranged for the dancing , which began immediately after we arrived and went on without a break until long after midnight . Then there was supper on the stage , and those who did not eat drank a good deal until nearly everybody seemed to be under the influence of alcohol . As a consequence many of the people , especially some of the women -LRB- not good women I fear -RRB- , seemed to lose all control of themselves , singing snatches of noisy songs , sipping out of the men 's glasses , taking the smoke of cigarettes out of the men 's mouths , sitting on the men 's knees , and even riding astride on the men 's arms and shoulders . I bore these sights as long as I could , making many fruitless appeals to my husband to take me home ; and I was just about to leave of myself , being sick of the degradation of my sex , when a kind of rostrum , with an empty chair on top of it , was carried in on the shoulders of a number of men .