Seated in the theatre, Helen looked about her in bewilderment. She had never been within the walls of a theatre. In the street the sun shone brightly. Here the sun was rigorously excluded, and gas took its place. It seemed to the unsophisticated child like a sudden leap from noon to night. She could hear the rumbling of vehicles in the streets, but it appeared to her, somehow, as if they were far away, and that she had come into a different world. She wondered what there was behind that broad green curtain in front, and why the lights should be arranged so oddly at the foot of it.