he performers
with admiring eyes--the music was so familiar that it was quite
unnecessary for him to follow the notes. Daddy Brown and the box office
man, sole occupants of the stalls, saw fit to applaud as the chorus
swung to a breathless pause.

"That's good, that's good," Brown shouted. "Just once more again please,
ladies, then we'll call a rest. Don't want to tire you out before
to-night."

The dance flourished to its second end and Fanny flung herself exhausted
against the wings. Her cough was troubling her again, shaking her thin
body, fighting its way through her tightened throat.

"It's worth it though," she laughed in answer to Joan's remonstrance;
"it is the only time I really live when I am dancing, you see."

The rehearsal dragged out its weary length, but not until Brown had
reduced all the company to such a state of exhaustion that they could
raise no quiver of protest to any of his orders. A man of iron himself,
he extracted and expected from the people under him the same powers of
endurance which he himself possessed. Since Fanny and Joan could not go
home to their lodgings, the time being too short, Strachan escorted them
out to obtain a meal of sorts before the evening's performance. Short of
Daddy Brown's hotel, which stood close to the theatre and which they
were all reluctant to try, there did not appear to be any restaurants in
the neighbourhood and they ended up by having a kind of high tea at a
little baker's. "Eggs are splendid things to act on," Strachan told
Joan.

The girls, however, on their return found a bottle of champagne and two
glasses waiting for them in Fanny's dressing-room. It had been sent with
Mr. Brown's compliments to Miss Bellairs. The sight of it sent up
Fanny's spirits with a bound.

"I did not know how I was going to get through the evening," she
confessed, "but this will put new life into us."

She insisted upon Joan having a glass, and the latter, conscious that in
her present state of tiredness she could hardly stand, far less dance,
sipped a little of the clear, bubbling liquid--sipped till the small
room grew large, till her feet seemed to tread on air, and her eyes
shone and sparkled like the brightest of stars on a dark night.

The theatre after that, the crowded rows of faces, the music and the
thunder of applause--the audience were good-tempered and inclined to be
amused at anything--passed before her like some gorgeous light-flecked
dream. When the sold