s done. I stood back from her, and really she looked so
much like Elizabeth painted by Gheeraerts or on the Great Seal of
Ireland or something--though the ash-colored plush dress trimmed in
silver and the little silver-edge ruff and the black-silver
tinsel-cloth cloak lined with white plush hanging behind her looked
most like a winter riding costume--and her face was such a pale frozen
mask of Elizabeth's inward tortures, that I told myself, _Oh, I got to
talk to Siddy again, he's made some big mistake, the lardy old
lackwit. Miss Nefer just can't be figuring on playing in Macbeth
tonight._

As a matter of fact I was nerving myself to ask _her_ all about it
direct, though it was going to take some real nerve and maybe be
risking broken bones or at least a flayed cheek to break the ice of
that characterization, when who should come by calling the Fifteen
Minutes but Martin. He looked so downright goofy that it took my mind
off Nefer-in-character for all of eight seconds.

His levied bottom half still looked like _The Lower Depths_. Martin is
Village Stanislavsky rather than Ye Olde English Stage Traditions. But
above that ... well, all it really amounted to was that he was
stripped to the waist and had shaved off the small high tuft of chest
hair and was wearing a black wig that hung down in front of his
shoulders in two big braids heavy with silver hoops and pins. But just
the same those simple things, along with his tarpaper-solarium tan and
habitual poker expression, made him look so like an American Indian
that I thought, _Hey Zeus!--he's all set to play Hiawatha, or if he'd
just cover up that straight-line chest, a frowny Pocahontas._ And I
quick ran through what plays with Indian parts we do and could only
come up with _The Fountain_.

I mutely goggled my question at him, wiggling my hands like guppy
fins, but he brushed me off with a solemn mysterious smile and backed
through the curtain. I thought, _nobody can explain this but Siddy_,
and I followed Martin.

II

History does not move in one current,
like the wind across bare seas,
but in a thousand streams and eddies,
like the wind over a broken landscape.
--Cary

The boys' half of the dressing room (two-thirds really) was bustling.
There was the smell of spirit gum and Max Factor and just plain men.
Several guys were getting dressed or un-, and Bruce was cussing
Bloody-something because he