had been with me most of the day. His little boy, hearing
him speak of me, was seized with a desire to go to the theatre, and
coaxed so well that his father promised to take him.

The play was "Odette." The doctor and his pretty little son sat in the
end seats of the parquet circle, close to the stage and almost facing
the whole house. The little fellow watched his first play closely. As
the comedy bit went on, he smiled up at his father, saying audibly, "I
like her--don't you, papa?"

Papa silenced him, while a few people who had overheard smiled over the
child's unconsciousness of observers. But when I had changed my dress
and crept into the darkened room in a _robe de chambre_; when the
husband had discovered my wrong-doing and was driving me out of his
house, a child's cry of protest came from the audience. At the same
moment, the husband raised his hand to strike. I repelled him with a
gesture and went staggering off the stage; while that indignant little
voice cried, "Papa! papa! can't you have that man arrested?" and the
curtain fell.

One of the actors ran to the peep-hole in the curtain, and saw the
doctor leading out the little man, who was then crying bitterly, the
audience smiling and applauding him, one might say affectionately.

A bit later the doctor came to my dressing-room to apologize and to tell
me the rest of it. When the curtain had fallen, the child had begged:
"Take me out--take me out!" and the doctor, thinking he might be ill,
rose and led him out. No sooner had they reached the door, however, than
he pulled his hand away, crying: "Quick, papa! quick! you go round the
block that way, and I'll run round this way, and we'll be sure to find
that poor lady that's out in the cold--just in her nighty!"

In vain he tried to explain, the child only grew more wildly excited;
and finally the doctor promised, if the child would come home at once,
only two blocks away, he would return and look for the lady--in the
nighty. And he had taken the little fellow home and had seen him fling
himself into his mother's arms, and with tears and sobs tell her of the
"poor lady whose husband had driven her right out into the blizzard,
don't you think, mamma, and only her nighty on; and, mamma, she hadn't
done one single bad thing--not one!"

Poor, warm-hearted, innocent little man; he was assured later on that
the lady had been found and taken to a hotel; and I hope his next play
was better suited to his tender y