Peter by E.F. Benson

One evening, a week or so before the date fixed for the wedding, Philip Beaumont and Nellie had dined and gone together to the first night of some new play. It was saliently characteristic of him -- a peak, so to say, prominently uprising from the smooth level of his cultivated plains -- that when arrangements for such diversions and businesses were in his hands they always went without a hitch. Nellie had expressed a desire to see this play, without giving long notice to him of her wish, and it followed, as a matter of course, that he managed to get gangway seats in the stalls at the most advantageous distance from the stage.

Things happened like that with him: his own unruffled smoothness, which seemed immune from any of the attacks of asperities of one kind or another, to which human nature is subject, seemed to create a similar well-ordered decorum in his activities. Tonight, for instance, the dinner which preceded the theatre was punctual and swiftly served, so that neither hurry nor undue lingering followed it: his motor slid up to the kerb-stone precisely as they quitted the restaurant, and it might be taken for granted that at the conclusion of the piece it would be bubbling up opposite the portals of the theatre precisely as they emerged. Once in their seats there had been but a few minutes to wait before the lights were lowered for the first act; these afforded a convenient time to grasp the real and the histrionic names of the actors and see where the acts were laid.