lexed Dr. Archie when he first heard it, "Tell the driver he must do
it in twenty minutes, less if he can. He must leave the light on in the
cab. I can do a good deal in twenty minutes. If only you hadn't made me
eat--Damn that duck!" she broke out bitterly; "why did you?"

"Wish I had it back! But it won't bother you, to-night. You need
strength," he pleaded consolingly.

But she only muttered angrily under her breath, "Idiot, idiot!"

Ottenburg shot ahead and instructed the driver, while the doctor put
Thea into the cab and shut the door. She did not speak to either of them
again. As the driver scrambled into his seat she opened the score and
fixed her eyes upon it. Her face, in the white light, looked as bleak as
a stone quarry.

As her cab slid away, Ottenburg shoved Archie into a second taxi that
waited by the curb. "We'd better trail her," he explained. "There might
be a hold-up of some kind." As the cab whizzed off he broke into an
eruption of profanity.

"What's the matter, Fred?" the doctor asked. He was a good deal dazed by
the rapid evolutions of the last ten minutes.

"Matter enough!" Fred growled, buttoning his overcoat with a shiver.
"What a way to sing a part for the first time! That duck really is on my
conscience. It will be a wonder if she can do anything but quack!
Scrambling on in the middle of a performance like this, with no
rehearsal! The stuff she has to sing in there is a fright--rhythm,
pitch,--and terribly difficult intervals."

"She looked frightened," Dr. Archie said thoughtfully, "but I thought
she looked--determined."

Fred sniffed. "Oh, determined! That's the kind of rough deal that makes
savages of singers. Here's a part she's worked on and got ready for for
years, and now they give her a chance to go on and butcher it. Goodness
knows when she's looked at the score last, or whether she can use the
business she's studied with this cast. Necker's singing BRUNNHILDE; she
may help her, if it's not one of her sore nights."

"Is she sore at Thea?" Dr. Archie asked wonderingly.

"My dear man, Necker's sore at everything. She's breaking up; too early;
just when she ought to be at her best. There's one story that she is
struggling under some serious malady, another that she learned a bad
method at the Prague Conservatory and has ruined her organ. She's the
sorest thing in the world. If she weathers this winter through, it'll be
her last. She's paying for it with the last rags of her vo