no more of that for her! The
last thing she wanted was to spoil her face, seeing that she had nothing
but her smile to keep her. And Lily grew timid, looked upon herself more
and more as a very precious little thing. She gave herself terrible airs
on rehearsal day; thought the stage too slippery, or too small. Lily
wanted a stage thirty feet wide, no less; she who, in the old days, at a
gesture from Pa, would have performed her whole turn, including the
head-on-the-saddle, on the top of a cab or on the Stoke Newington
pavement. Formerly, she used to think everything good, did not know what
fatigue meant; now, in the middle of her turn, she would say to herself,
sometimes with a feeling of discouragement:

"I've only done half. I've still got this and that to do."

And the audience itself seemed to act as her confederate. When she missed
one of her tricks, Lily would lay her bike on the stage, step down to the
footlights, bow with a confused air, beg pardon with a smile and receive a
reassuring round of applause. Lily loved these refined audiences: _her_
audiences, as she said; not the matinee audiences, with seats at reduced
prices: to see your grocer or your butcher in the front boxes was rotten;
and those people gave themselves such airs. A cheap way of doing the
grand!

And the landladies spoiled her, too; those worthy souls who treated her as
their own daughter.

"And a jolly sight better!" thought Lily.

Others pitied her for the profession she followed, feared she would break
something, one fine day. Lily thought that very sweet of them, would have
liked to stay with them for ever; but there was the constant rent at
parting, a bit of herself which Lily left behind her every week. And the
bothers that Maud caused her! Her stupidity drove Lily mad: tickets lost,
bags mislaid, disputes with the tradesmen, battles with the bike,
scratches on the shins, on the hands, everywhere. Lily lost patience,
threatened her with the leather belt, damn it!

Sometimes, Lily became incensed with herself and everybody. Her divorce
kept running in her head. And her three years' book, with its last pages
unsoiled by engagements, also gave her cause for uneasiness; and yet the
acting managers must have sung her praises, in their weekly reports,--the
ones who came and made love to her on the stage!

After different music-halls, she had done the Harrasford tour, but without
any great success. People who had known her with the troup