'er best she would. She took off the big flowery hat quite calmly,
giving it to W. Keyse to keep. The panic came on later, when the
Christy-minstrel-collared, burnt-corked Master of the Revels was gallantly
helping her up the short side-ladder, and culminated when he retreated,
and left her there, standing on the platform in the bewildering glare of
the acetylene footlights, a little, rather slight and flat-chested figure
of a girl, blue-eyed and yellow-haired, in a washed-out flowery "blowse,"
and a "voylet" delaine skirt that had lost its pristine beauty, and showed
faded and shabby in the yellow gas-flare.

Oh! 'owever 'ad she dared? That dazzling sea of faces, with the eyes all
fixed on her, was terrifying. A big lump grew in her throat, and the
crowded benches tilted, and the flaming lights leaped to the roof as the
helpless, timid tears welled into her blue eyes.

And then the miracle happened.

W. Keyse sat on a back-bench, the thin Cockney face a little raised above
the others, because he had slipped a rolled-up overcoat under him,
pretending that it was to get it out of the way, you understand. Always
very sensitive about his shortness, W. Keyse. And she saw his face, as
plain as you please, and with a look in the pale, eager eyes, that for
once was for Emigration Jane, her very own self, and not for That There
Other One. She knew in that moment of revelation that she had always been
jealous. Oh, wasn't it strynge? Her heart surged out to W. Keyse across
the gulf of crowded faces. And her eyes had in them, all at once, the look
that is born of Love.

Ah! who can mistake it? It begets a solitude in a vast thronged assemblage
for you and for me. It sends its silent, wordless, eloquent message
thrilling to the heart of the Beloved, and wins its passionate answer
back. Ah! who can err about the look of Love?

She drew a deep breath that was her longing sigh for him, infinitely dear,
and never to belong to her, and began her song. She sang it quite simply
and naturally, in an untutored but sweet and plaintive voice, and with the
Cockney accent that spoke of home to nearly all that heard. And her eyes
never moved from his face as she sang.

The song was, I dare say, a foolish, trivial thing. But the air was
pretty, and the words were simple, and it had a haunting refrain. To this
effect, that the world is a big place and a hard place, with scant measure
of joy in it, for you or for me. Bitter herbs grow side by