een the same since, and for the present, at any rate, I have
left him and gone on the stage. A lady whom I knew got me a place in the
chorus here, and so far I like it immensely.

Won't you come and meet me after the show to-morrow night, and I will
tell you all about it? I should like so much to see you again.

MAUD.

Peter Ruff placed this letter in his breast-coat pocket, and withheld it
from his secretary's notice. He felt, however, very little pleasure at
the invitation it conveyed. He hesitated for some time, in fact, whether
to accept it or not. Finally, after his modest dinner that evening, he
bought a stall for the Frivolity and watched the piece. The girl he had
come to see was there in the second row of the chorus, but she certainly
did not look her best in the somewhat scant costume required by the
part. She showed no signs whatever of any special ability--neither her
dancing nor her singing seemed to entitle her to any consideration. She
carried herself with a certain amount of self-consciousness, and her
eyes seemed perpetually fixed upon the occupants of the stalls. Peter
Ruff laid down his glasses with something between a sigh and a groan.
There was something to him inexpressibly sad in the sight of his old
sweetheart so transformed, so utterly changed from the prim, somewhat
genteel young person who had accepted his modest advances with such
ladylike diffidence. She seemed, indeed, to have lost those very gifts
which had first attracted him. Nevertheless, he kept his appointment at
the stage-door.

She was among the first to come out, and she greeted him warmly--almost
noisily. With her new profession, she seemed to have adopted a different
and certainly more flamboyant deportment.

"I thought you'd come to-night," she declared, with an arch look.
"I felt certain I saw you in the stalls. You are going to take me to
supper, aren't you? Shall we go to the Milan?"

Peter Ruff assented without enthusiasm, handed her into a hansom, and
took his place beside her. She wore a very large hat, untidily put on;
some of the paint seemed still to be upon her face; her voice, too,
seemed to have become louder, and her manner more assertive. There were
obvious indications that she no longer considered brandy and soda an
unladylike beverage. Peter Ruff was not pleased with himself or proud of
his companion.

"You'll take some wine?" he suggested, after he had ordered, with a few
hints from her, a somewhat ext