doors ajar from which issued whispers and exclamations
and transient visions of young women. From the star's dressing-room, at
the end, a crowd of all sorts and conditions of persons was being
pushed. Mr. Prohack trembled with an awful apprehension, and asked
himself vainly what in the name of commonsense he was doing there, and
prayed that Ozzie might be refused admission. The next moment he was
being introduced to a middle-aged woman in a middle-aged dressing-gown.
Her face was thickly caked with paint and powder, her eyes surrounded
with rings of deepest black, her finger-nails red. Mr. Prohack, not
without difficulty, recognised Eliza. A dresser stood on either side of
her. Blinding showers of electric light poured down upon her defenceless
but hardy form. She shook hands, but Mr. Prohack deemed that she ought
to bear a notice: "Danger. Visitors are requested not to touch."

"So good of you to come round," she said, in her rich and powerful
voice, smiling with all her superb teeth. Mr. Prohack, entranced, gazed,
not as at a woman, but as at a public monument. Nevertheless he thought
that she was not a bad kind, and well suited for the rough work of the
world.

"I hope you're all coming to my ball to-night," said she. Mr. Prohack
had never heard of any ball. In an instant she told him that she had
remarked two most charming ladies with him in the box--(inordinate
faculty of observation, mused Mr. Prohack)--and in another instant she
was selling him three two guinea tickets for a grand ball and rout in
aid of the West End Chorus Girls' Aid Association. Could he refuse,
perceiving so clearly as he did that within the public monument was
hiding a wistful creature, human like himself, human like his wife and
daughter? He could not.

"Now you'll _come_?" said she.

Mr. Prohack swore that he would come, his heart sinking as he realised
the consequence of his own foolish weakness. There was a knock at the
door.

"Did you want me, Liza?" said a voice, and a fat gentleman, clothed with
resplendent correctness, stepped into the room. It was the
stage-manager, a god in his way.

Eliza Fiddle became a cyclone.

"I should think I did want you," she said passionately. "That's why I
sent for you, and next time I'll ask you to come quicker. I'm not going
to have that squint-eyed girl on the stage any more to-night. You know,
the one at the end of the row. Twice she spoiled my exit by getting in
the way. And you've got to t