ead straps, or swarming like stuck flies
on the fore and hind platforms, the squeeze and smell intensified by
the shovings and writhings of damp passengers getting in and out, or
by the desperate wriggling of the poor patient collector of fares
boring his way through the very thick of the soldered mass. Elkan
alighted with a headache, glad even of the cold rain that sprinkled
his forehead. The shining carriages at the door of the theatre filled
him for once with a bitter revolt. But he dared not insinuate himself
among the white-wrapped, scented women and elegant cloaked men, though
he itched to enter the portico and study the pictures of Yvonne
Rupert, of which he caught a glimpse. He found his way instead to the
stage-door, and took up a position that afforded him a complete view
of the comers and goers, if only partial shelter from the rain.

But the leaden hours passed without her, with endless fevers of
expectation, heats followed by chills. The performers came and went,
mostly on foot, and strange nondescript men and women passed too
through the jealously-guarded door.

He was drenched to the skin with accumulated drippings ere a smart
brougham drove up, a smart groom opened an umbrella, and a smart--an
unimaginably smart--Gittel Goldstein alighted.

Yes, the incredible was true!

Beneath that coquettish veil, under the aureole of hair, gleamed the
piquant eyes he had kissed so often.

He remained petrified an instant, dazed and staring. She passed
through the door the groom held open. The doorkeeper, from his
pigeon-hole, handed her some letters. Yes, he knew every trick of the
shoulders, every turn of the neck. She stood surveying the envelopes.
As the groom let the door swing back and turned away, he rushed
forward and pushed it open again.

'Gittel!' he cried chokingly. 'Gittel!'

She turned with a quick jerk of the head, and in her flushed, startled
face he read consciousness if not recognition. The reek of her old
cherry-blossom smote from her costlier garments, kindling a thousand
passionate memories.

'Knowest thou me not?' he cried in Yiddish.

In a flash her face, doubly veiled, was a haughty stare.

'Who is zis person?' she asked the doorkeeper in her charming
French-English.

He reverted to English.

'I am Elkan, your own Elkan!'

Ah, the jostle of sweet and bitter memories. So near, so near again!
The same warm seductive witch. He strove to take her daintily-gloved
hand.

She shran