time
the two women were alone together. Both keyed up almost to the breaking
point, we faced each other, and there was a dead, I might almost say a
_deadly_ pause before either spoke.

It was very effective--that silence before the storm. People would lean
forward and fairly hold their breath, feeling there was a death struggle
coming. And just at that very moment of tensest feeling, as we two
women silently measured each other, a man's voice clearly and
exultantly declared:--

"Well, _now_, we'll get the returns read, I reckon."

In one instant the whole house was in a roar of laughter. Under cover of
the noise I said to my companion, who was showing her annoyance, "Keep
still! keep still!"

And as we stood there like statues, utterly ignoring the interruption,
there was a sudden outbreak of hissing, and the laughter stopped as
suddenly as it had burst out, and our scene went on, receiving even more
than its usual meed of applause. But when the curtain had fallen, I had
my own laugh; for _it was_ funny, very funny.

In Boston there was an interruption of a different nature. It was at a
matinee performance. There were tear-wet faces everywhere you looked.
The last act was on. I was slipping to my knees in my vain entreaty to
be allowed to see my children as their mother, not merely as their
dying governess, when a tall, slim, black-robed woman rose up in the
parquet. She flung out her arms in a superb gesture, and in a voice of
piercing anguish cried:--

"For God's sake, let her have her children! I've lived through such
loss, but she can't; it will kill her!"

Tears sprang to the eyes of every one on the stage, and there was a
perceptible halt in the movement of the play. And when, at the death
scene, a lady was carried out in a faint, we were none of us surprised
to hear it was _she_ who had so far forgotten where she was as to make
that passionate plea for a woman whose suffering was probably but a
faint reflection of her own.

_CHAPTER V

THE "NEW MAGDALEN" AT THE UNION SQUARE_

One night at the Union Square Theatre, when the "New Magdalen" was
running, we became aware of the presence of a distinguished visitor--a
certain actress from abroad.

As I looked at the beautiful woman, magnificently dressed and jewelled,
I found it simply impossible to believe the stories I had heard of her
frightful poverty, in the days of her lowly youth.

Her manner was listless, her expression bored; even the co