d the iron door, in the dark, the bird! It was all for her: a theater
for herself! And she felt a need to leap, to laugh, to spread gaiety all
around her; and she rushed about madly with the Bambinis, romped with them
behind the pillars, rolled with them on the floor of her dressing-room,
became once again the Lily who had played truant all around the world,
inventing practical jokes in India and climbing apple-trees in Honolulu.
She crossed the combs and tooth-brushes on the Roofer girls' tables,
rushed into their room when they were undressed, drove the trembling herd
of them distracted, talked of the thousand dangers that awaited them if
they didn't mend their ways, made them fly to their lucky charms to ward
off ill-luck, when she offered them a yellow flower, with great pomp, or
some broken glass in a jewel-box. Then she talked to the Three Graces,
those big girls who always astonished her with their cloistered
existence--Nunkie before everything--and who amused themselves by
measuring one another round the biceps, round the chest, or else, with
their elbows on the table, played at who should first bend back the
other's wrist. Lily sat down for a moment with them, then stopped,
breathless with larking and talking, and went back to her dressing-room:

"I shall have months to spend in here!" she thought.

[Illustration: LILY'S GOLLYWOG]

And, assisted by Glass-Eye, she pinned up bits of stuff, tied a silk bow
to the back of the chair, put up nails for her costumes, laid out on her
table long rows of post-cards, photographs of friends, all dispersed to
the four quarters of the globe, some dead, others done for, all the poor
witnesses of her life. Then she took her black gollywog from her trunk and
kissed it passionately--"Darling! Darling! Darling!"--before hanging it up
on the wall. And along the dressing-room passage and through the window
came the sound of voices ... snatches of homesick tunes: _From Rangoon to
Mandalay_ or _Way down upon the Suwanee River_ ... and "Hullo, Lily!
Hullo, old boy!"... The female-impersonator walked into her room as though
it were his own, sat down on the basket trunk, plunging his green eyes
into hers.

And sometimes Jimmy passed, always at a run: something had gone wrong
somewhere, the heating apparatus, the electric light....

"Hullo, Lily!" And he stopped for a moment, frowned at the sight of the
impersonator. "Always busy?" he asked, seeing Lily, bare-armed, washing
something