s it matter? Ve don't convinze zem, ve don't
convinze nobody. _Nichevo._"

_Maybe_, I thought, _Doc shares my doubts about making Macbeth
plausible in rainbow pants._

Still unobserved by them, I looked between their shoulders and got the
first of my shocks.

It wasn't night at all, but afternoon. A dark cold lowering afternoon,
admittedly. But afternoon all the same.

Sure, between shows I sometimes forget whether it's day or night,
living inside like I do. But getting matinees and evening performances
mixed is something else again.

It also seemed to me, although Beau was leaning in now and I couldn't
see so well, that the glade was smaller than it should be, the trees
closer to us and more irregular, and I couldn't see the benches. That
was Shock Two.

Beau said anxiously, glancing at his wrist, "I wonder what's holding
up the Queen?"

Although I was busy keeping up nerve-pressure against the shocks, I
managed to think. _So he knows about Siddy's stupid Queen Elizabeth
prologue too. But of course he would. It's only me they keep in the
dark. If he's so smart he ought to remember that Miss Nefer is always
the last person on stage, even when she opens the play._

And then I thought I heard, through the trees, the distant drumming
of horses' hoofs and the sound of a horn.

* * * * *

Now they do have horseback riding in Central Park and you can hear
auto horns there, but the hoofbeats don't drum that wild way. And
there aren't so many riding together. And no auto horn I ever heard
gave out with that sweet yet imperious _ta-ta-ta-TA_.

I must have squeaked or something, because Beau and Doc turned around
quickly, blocking my view, their expressions half angry, half anxious.

I turned too and ran for the dressing room, for I could feel one of my
mind-wavery fits coming on. At the last second it had seemed to me
that the scenery was getting skimpier, hardly more than thin trees and
bushes itself, and underfoot feeling more like ground than a ground
cloth, and overhead not theater roof but gray sky. _Shock Three and
you're out, Greta_, my umpire was calling.

I made it through the dressing room door and nothing there was
wavering or dissolving, praised be Pan. Just Martin standing with his
back to me, alert, alive, poised like a cat inside that green dress,
the prompt book in his right hand with a finger in it, and from his
left hand long black tatters swinging--telling me he'