stage until it echoed and resounded and came bounding back in my
face from every corner of the shadow-plunged theater. I knew I was in
for it and drew myself up majestically although I turned pale under my
war paint.

"Well, tell him he isn't walking on stilts," continued the director,
and although it was perfectly unnecessary, I was told that and several
other things with brutal candor. The dance went on but I knew the eyes
of the director were on me. My legs seemed to lose all proper
coordination. My arms became unmanageable. I lost step and could not
pick it up again, yet, as in a nightmare, I struggled on desperately.
Suddenly the director clapped his hands. The music ceased, and I
slowed down to an uneasy shuffle.

"Sweetheart," said the director, addressing me personally, "you're not
dancing. You're swimming, that's what you're doing. As a Persian girl
you would make a first class squaw." He halted for a moment and then
bawled out in a great voice, "Understudy!" and I was removed from the
stage in a fainting condition. This evening I was shipped back to
camp a thoroughly discredited Show Girl. I had labored long in
vicious, soul-squelching corsets and like Samson been shorn of my
locks, and here I am after all my sacrifices relegated back to the
scrap heap. Why am I always the unfortunate one? I must have a private
plot in the sky strewn with unlucky stars. Camp routine after the free
life of the stage is unbearably irksome. My particular jimmy legs was
so glad to see me back that he almost cried as he thrust a broom and a
swab into my hands.

"Bear a hand," he said gleefully, "get to work and stick to it. We're
short of men," he added, "and there is no end of things for you to
do."

I did them all and he was right. There surely is no end to the things
he can devise for me to do. I long for the glamour and footlights of
the gay white way, but I have been cast out and rejected as many a
Show Girl has been before me.

_June 1st._ The morning papers say all sort of nice things about
Biff-Bang but I can hardly believe them sincere after the treatment I
received. I know for a fact that the man who took my place was
knock-kneed and that the rest of his figure could not hold a candle to
mine.

I still feel convinced that Biff-Bang lost one of its most
prepossessing and talented artists when I was so unceremoniously
removed from the chorus.

_June 10th._ I was standing doing harm to no one in a vague, rathe