upted Barnes, hastily, knowing he would be
worsted in any argument with this veteran player. "Then clear the
stage! Act first!" And the rehearsal began.

If the audience were specters, the performers moved, apparently
without rhyme or reason, mere shadows on the dimly lighted stage;
enacting some semblance to scenes of mortal life; their jests and
gibes, unnatural in that comparatively empty place; their voices, out
of the semi-darkness, like those of spirits rehearsing acts of long
ago. In the evening it would all become an amusing, bright-colored
reality, but now the barrenness of the scenes was forcibly apparent.

"That will do for to-day," said the manager at the conclusion of the
last act. "To-morrow, ladies and gentlemen, at the same time. And any
one who is late--will be fined!"

"Changing the piece every few nights is all work and no play,"
complained Susan.

"It will keep you out of mischief, my dear," replied Barnes, gathering
up his manuscripts.

"Oh, I don't know about that!" returned Miss Susan, with a defiant
toss of the head, as she moved toward the dressing-room where they
had left their wraps. It was a small apartment, fairly bright and
cheery, with here and there a portrait against the wall. Above the
dressing-table hung a mirror, diamond-scratched with hieroglyphic
scrawls, among which could be discerned a transfixed heart, spitted
like a lark on an arrow, and an etching of Lady Gay Spanker, with
cork-screw curls. Taglioni, in pencil caricature, her limbs
"divinely slender," gyrated on her toes in reckless abandon above
this mute record of names now forgotten.

"What lovely roses, Constance!" exclaimed Susan, as she entered,
bending over a large bouquet on one of the chairs. "From the count, I
presume?"

"Yes," indifferently answered the young girl, who was adjusting her
hat before the mirror.

"How attentive he is!" cooed Susan, her tones floating in a higher
register. "Poor man! Enjoy yourself while you may, my dear," she went
on. "When youth is gone, what is left? Women should sow their wild
oats as well as men. I don't call them wild oats, though, but
paradisaical oats. The Elysian fields are strewn with them."

As she spoke, her glance swept her companion searchingly, and, in that
brief scrutiny, Susan observed with inward complacency how pale the
other was, and how listless her manner! Their common secret, however,
made Susan's outward demeanor sweetly solicitous and gently
sympathe