ng to her in an undertone, and she held out
her hand to the girl.

"Come, we are to join a party in the supper-room. We shall see you after
supper, Mr. Keith?"

Keith said he hoped so. He was conscious of a sudden wave of
disappointment sweeping over him as the three left him. The young girl
gave him a bright smile.

Later, as he passed by, he saw only Ferdy Wickersham with Mrs. Norman.
Lois Huntington was at another table, so Keith joined her.

After the supper there was to be a novel kind of entertainment: a sort
of vaudeville show in which were to figure a palmist, a gentleman set
down in the programme with its gilt printing as the "Celebrated
Professor Cheireman"; several singers; a couple of acrobatic performers;
and a danseuse: "Mlle. Terpsichore."

The name struck Keith with something of sadness. It recalled old
associations, some of them pleasant, some of them sad. And as he stood
near Lois Huntington, on the edge of the throng that filled the large
apartment where the stage had been constructed, during the first three
or four numbers he was rather more in Gumbolt than in that gay company
in that brilliant room.

"Professor Cheireman" had shown the wonders of the trained hand and the
untrained mind in a series of tricks that would certainly be wonderful
did not so many men perform them. Mlle. de Voix performed hardly less
wonders with her voice, running up and down the scale like a squirrel
in a cage, introducing trills into songs where there were none, and
making the simplest melodies appear as intricate as pieces of opera. The
Burlystone Brothers jumped over and skipped under each other in a
marvellous and "absolutely unrivalled manner." And presently the
danseuse appeared.

Keith was standing against the wall thinking of Terpy and the old hail
with its paper hangings in Gumbolt, and its benches full of eager,
jovial spectators, when suddenly there was a roll of applause, and he
found himself in Gumbolt. From the side on which he stood walked out his
old friend, Terpy herself. He had not been able to see her until she was
well out on the stage and was making her bow. The next second she
began to dance.

After the first greeting given her, a silence fell on the room, the best
tribute they could pay to her art, her grace, her abandon. Nothing so
audacious had ever been seen by certainly half the assemblage. Casting
aside the old tricks of the danseuse, the tipping and pirouetting and
grimacing for app