the key
and drew back the door, while the ballet-girls retreated to the inner
dressing-room and Meg Giry sighed:

"Mother! Mother!"

Sorelli looked into the passage bravely. It was empty; a gas-flame, in
its glass prison, cast a red and suspicious light into the surrounding
darkness, without succeeding in dispelling it. And the dancer slammed
the door again, with a deep sigh.

"No," she said, "there is no one there."

"Still, we saw him!" Jammes declared, returning with timid little
steps to her place beside Sorelli. "He must be somewhere prowling
about. I shan't go back to dress. We had better all go down to the
foyer together, at once, for the 'speech,' and we will come up again
together."

And the child reverently touched the little coral finger-ring which she
wore as a charm against bad luck, while Sorelli, stealthily, with the
tip of her pink right thumb-nail, made a St. Andrew's cross on the
wooden ring which adorned the fourth finger of her left hand. She said
to the little ballet-girls:

"Come, children, pull yourselves together! I dare say no one has ever
seen the ghost."

"Yes, yes, we saw him--we saw him just now!" cried the girls. "He had
his death's head and his dress-coat, just as when he appeared to Joseph
Buquet!"

"And Gabriel saw him too!" said Jammes. "Only yesterday! Yesterday
afternoon--in broad day-light----"

"Gabriel, the chorus-master?"

"Why, yes, didn't you know?"

"And he was wearing his dress-clothes, in broad daylight?"

"Who? Gabriel?"

"Why, no, the ghost!"

"Certainly! Gabriel told me so himself. That's what he knew him by.
Gabriel was in the stage-manager's office. Suddenly the door opened
and the Persian entered. You know the Persian has the evil eye----"

"Oh, yes!" answered the little ballet-girls in chorus, warding off
ill-luck by pointing their forefinger and little finger at the absent
Persian, while their second and third fingers were bent on the palm and
held down by the thumb.

"And you know how superstitious Gabriel is," continued Jammes.
"However, he is always polite. When he meets the Persian, he just puts
his hand in his pocket and touches his keys. Well, the moment the
Persian appeared in the doorway, Gabriel gave one jump from his chair
to the lock of the cupboard, so as to touch iron! In doing so, he tore
a whole skirt of his overcoat on a nail. Hurrying to get out of the
room, he banged his forehead against a hat-peg and gave