"Don't apologise," I said. "This show had too good a press." I had broken a rule, and didn't care.

I had come here because tomorrow I was going home and I wanted to take away a memory, however trivial, of the New Liberal Germany that people talked so much about. The Neukomodietheater was said to be the centre of fresh youthful gaiety (Suddeutsche Zeitung) where the new iteration was making its breakthrough to a kind of music that had not been heard before (Der Spiegel). No one had mentioned the corn.

"What a pity you are disappointed," murmured the man, on your last night in Berlin." He glanced down at the hge and then moved his chair back quietly. "Perhaps I can interest you by way of conversation." For a moment had thought he was leaving, but he had sat down again. His chair was now below one of the little shaded lamps on thewall of the box, so that his face was in shadow. I wondered who he was.

"Perhaps, Mr. Quiller," he said softly, leaning towards "you would care to move your chair closer, so that we can speak quietly." He added: " My name is Pol."

I did not move. "Apart from your name, Herr Pol, I don't know anything about you. I think you are making a mistake. This box was reserved for me exclusively number 7. Yours is possibly Number 1. The figures are sometimes confused."

The girls and boys were wheeling about the stage with heir arms out like wings, swooping and diving and cleverly missing each other in what the press called an aerial ballet of intricate patterns that bespelled the eye. Now the stage lights went dim and the dancers were seen to be wearing tiny electric lamps on their hands as they wove their way about each other. I was saddened. Even the bright new generation couldn't make its breakthrough without putting on a number that unconsciously resembled an air-battle.