danced the dance which bit all humanity in
the leg for half a year, and it wound up with the lockstep finale that
mowed the house down in swathes, sobbing and aching. Somebody in the
gallery moaned, 'Oh Gord, the Gubby!' and we heard the word run like a
shudder, for they had not a full breath left among them. Then 'Dal came
on, an electric star in her dark hair, the diamonds flashing in her
three-inch heels--a vision that made no sign for thirty counted seconds
while the police-court scene dissolved behind her into Morgiana's
Manicure Palace, and they recovered themselves. The star on her forehead
went out, and a soft light bathed her as she took--slowly, slowly to the
croon of adoring strings--the eighteen paces forward. We saw her first
as a queen alone; next as a queen for the first time conscious of her
subjects, and at the end, when her hands fluttered, as a woman
delighted, awed not a little, but transfigured and illuminated with
sheer, compelling affection and goodwill. I caught the broken mutter of
welcome--the coo which is more than tornadoes of applause. It died and
rose and died again lovingly.

'She's got it across,' Bat whispered. 'I've never seen her like this. I
told her to light up the star, but I was wrong, and she knew it. She's
an artist.'

''Dal, you darling!' some one spoke, not loudly but it carried through
the house.

'Thank _you_!' 'Dal answered, and in that broken tone one heard the last
fetter riveted. 'Good evening, boys! I've just come from--now--where the
dooce was it I have come from?' She turned to the impassive files of
the Gubby dancers, and went on: 'Ah, so good of you to remind me, you
dear, bun-faced things. I've just come from the village--The Village
that Voted the Earth was Flat.'

She swept into that song with the full orchestra. It devastated the
habitable earth for the next six months. Imagine, then, what its rage
and pulse must have been at the incandescent hour of its birth! She only
gave the chorus once. At the end of the second verse, 'Are you _with_
me, boys?' she cried, and the house tore it clean away from
her--'_Earth_ was flat--_Earth_ was flat. Flat as my hat--Flatter than
that'--drowning all but the bassoons and double-basses that marked
the word.

'Wonderful,' I said to Bat. 'And it's only "Nuts in May," with
variations.'

'Yes--but _I_ did the variations,' he replied.

At the last verse she gestured to Carlini the conductor, who threw her
up his baton. She