midnight
There she was , all her four limbs superbly displayed , sweetly smiling with her enormous mouth , just as if the relations between Blaggs and herself were those of Paul and Virginia . The excited audience , in the professional phrase , was `` eating '' her . Mr. Prohack was really a most absurd person . _ Smack Your Face _ , when it came to an end , towards midnight , had established itself as an authentic enormous success ; and because Mr. Prohack did not care for it , because it bored him , because he found it vulgar and tedious and expensive , because it tasted in his mouth like a dust-and-ashes sandwich , the fellow actually felt sad ; he felt even bitter . He hated to see the fashionable and splendid audience unwilling to leave the theatre , cheering one super-favourite , five arch-favourites and fifteen favourites , and cheering them again and again , and sending the curtain up and down and up and down time after time . He could not bear that what he detested should be deliriously admired . He went so far as to form views about the decadence of the theatre as an institution .