re presently, for the great scene!

"Wait for me a minute," she said to Ave Maria. "Sit down over there, in
the corner."

And Lily went up to her dressing-room; she wanted to look her best, to
bedizen herself ... a little red on her lips, a little blue on her eyelids
... to make Trampy regret the more what he was going to lose. And, when
she was ready, Jimmy passed and, icicle though he was, could not help
paying her a compliment on her good looks. He appeared quite
disconcerted:

"Just imagine, Lily. What do you think happened to me, in the
impersonator's dressing-room? I had something to say to him ... I walk in
... see the impersonator half undressed ... and it's a woman, Lily, a
magnificent woman! You never told me, you kiddie!"

"Hush!" said Lily. "Don't give her away; it's a secret, it's her living,
Jimmy."

"Don't be afraid, Lily, I won't prevent any one from earning her living,
as long as she does all right on the stage. But I don't know where I am
now. That woman who came in with you, for instance," continued Jimmy
jestingly, "she looks just like a man; there's no knowing; nothing would
surprise me after that!"

"She's a woman, Jimmy, a married woman! You'll see presently. We'll have a
good laugh; mind you're there! I want everybody to be there! It's a
surprise, Jimmy!"

What a kiddie she was, thought Jimmy, as he went down the stairs. The
architect, the impersonator: the two scandals of her life. That
impersonator whom she kissed in front of him, a story that had gone round
the world, Lily's love affairs, one more ready to leave wife and children
for her sake: the exaggeration of the stage, always; professional
boasting. Like the story of the whippings, like those girls whom she had
described to him, and herself, with all over her skin--"Here, here, damn
it!"--wounds that you could put your finger into. Or like those who were
said to be done for, or burned alive, or drowned in shipwrecks, with waves
miles high, all for the honor of the profession; when, perhaps, it was
simply as good a way as another of retiring from the stage, to get
married, with a flourish of trumpets! It wasn't true, all that, or their
parade of vice either, all humbug, from end to end, their amorous
conquests, their orgies, their escapades, like their ostrich-feathers,
that long, or their sham diamonds, that big, and bouquets large enough to
fill a cab. But they were decent-hearted girls, all the same: that Lily,
what a kiddie, t