ck again, left herself in Lily's hands. She felt as if she
were looking at a princess, when Lily made Glass-Eye spin round the room.
She could not even help smiling when she saw Glass-Eye catch her foot in
the dresses spread out on the floor, so much so that Lily asked her
angrily if she meant to go on hopping about like that for ever, if she
really wanted to have a candle lit in her glass eye to make her see that
bodice, there, right in front of her nose, damn it! And Glass-Eye's
fright, when she heard that ... though Glass-Eye was never surprised at
anything that Lily said or did!

Going to the Astrarium, Lily, followed by Glass-Eye, walked along the
street with her cheeky feather waving like a flag in battle. Ave Maria, by
her side, kept close to the wall, with frightened glances to right and
left; Lily did not call her attention to the Astrarium posters for fear of
humiliating her: she would have had to explain that she was topping the
bill and poor Ave Maria, who was starring at the fair, would never have
understood. A professional abyss separated the two of them. Lily saw this
and had too kind a heart to let the other feel it. What a difference
between them! Merely in the way in which Lily entered the theater and
smiled to the stage-doorkeeper! Ave Maria followed very timidly, like a
beggar-woman stealing into a palace. She felt out of her element in those
big theaters, where she had not appeared for ever so long, having come
down to the level of one-horse circuses, patched canvas tents, acrobatic
performances in the open air, on the slack-wire stretched from tree to
tree. Lily looked a princess beside her, really. Ave Maria was even
surprised to see her address a gentleman who was there: it was the
architect, with a bandage over his eye. Ave Maria recognized him; and he,
rendered prudent by the blow which he had received from "her man," stepped
back instinctively at the sight of her. But Lily caught him by the lapel
of his coat:

"You've been fooling me ... with your measurements," she said, "and there
are certain things that jossers oughtn't to meddle with; and it serves you
right, that black eye of yours; but I forgive you, because of the immense
service you're doing me ... without knowing it ... you lover of
second-rate goods!" she muttered, as she watched him slink off, taking her
forgiveness with him.

The stage was almost empty. Tom had come, not Trampy; so much the better,
there would be all the more the