. We'll go on the road for two
weeks. Then we'll open at the Blackstone in Chicago. I think this girl
has got more real genius than any woman since--since Bernhardt in her
prime. Five years from now she won't be singing. She'll be acting. And
it'll _be_ acting."

"Aren't you forcing things just a little?" asked Wallie, coolly.

"Oh, no. No. Anyway, it's just a try-out. By the way, Wallie, I'll
probably be gone almost a month. If things go pretty well in Chicago
I'll run over to French Lick for eight or ten days and see if I can't
get a little of this stiffness out of my old bones. Will you do
something for me?"

"Sure."

"Pack a few clothes and go up to my place and live there, will you? The
Jap stays on, anyway. The last time I left it alone things went wrong.
You'll be doing me a favour. Take it and play the piano, and have your
friends in, and boss the Jap around. He's stuck on you, anyway. Says he
likes to hear you play."

He stayed away six weeks. And any one who knows him knows what hardship
that was. He loved New York, and his own place, and his comfort, and his
books; and hotel food gave him hideous indigestion.

Mizzi's first appearance was a moderate success. It was nothing like the
sensation of her later efforts. She wasn't ready, and Hahn knew it.
Mizzi and her middle-aged woman companion were installed at the
Blackstone Hotel, which is just next door to the Blackstone Theatre, as
any one is aware who knows Chicago. She was advertised as the Polish
comedienne, Mizzi Markis, and the announcements hinted at her royal
though remote ancestry. And on the night the play opened, as Mizzi
stepped from the entrance of her hotel on her way to the stage door,
just forty or fifty feet away, there she saw stretched on the pavement a
scarlet path of soft-grained carpet for her feet to tread. From the
steps of the hotel to the stage door of the theatre, there it lay, a
rosy line of splendour.

The newspapers played it up as a publicity stunt. Every night, while the
play lasted, the carpet was there. It was rolled up when the stage door
closed upon her. It was unrolled and spread again when she came out
after the performance. Hahn never forgot her face when she first saw it,
and realized its significance. The look was there on the second night,
and on the third, but after that it faded, vanished, and never came
again. Mizzi had tasted of the golden fruit and found it dry and
profitless, without nourishment or sweet