lushed, her eyes bright. She turned it upside down. Then she pawed it
over. Then she went back to the contents of the first two boxes, clawing
about among the limp garments with which the table was strewn. She was
breathing quickly. Suddenly: "It isn't here!" she cried. "It isn't
here!" She turned and flew to the stairway. The voices of the men came
up to her. She leaned far over the railing. "McCabe! McCabe!"

"Yeh? What do you want?"

"The black velvet dress! The black velvet dress! It isn't there."

"Oh, yeh. That's all right. Haddon, she's got a bug about that dress,
and she says she wants to take it to London with her, to use on the
opening night. She says if she wears a new one that first night, the
play'll be a failure. Some temperament, that girl, since she's got to be
a star!"

Josie stood clutching the railing of the stairway. Her disappointment
was so bitter that she could not weep. She felt cheated, outraged. She
was frightened at the intensity of her own sensations. "She might have
let me have it," she said aloud in the dim half light of the hallway.
"She's got everything else in the world. She might have let me have
that."

Then she went back into the big, bright sewing room. "Splendour" ran
three years in London.

During those three years she saw Sid Hahn only three or four times. He
spent much of his time abroad. Whenever opportunity presented itself she
would say: "Is 'Splendour' still playing in London?"

"Still playing."

The last time Hahn, intuitive as always, had eyed her curiously. "You
seem to be interested in that play."

"Oh, well," Josie had replied with assumed carelessness, "it being in
Atlantic City just when I had my accident, and then meeting you through
that, and all, why, I always kind of felt a personal interest in it." ...

At the end of three years Sarah Haddon returned to New York with an
English accent, a slight embonpoint, and a little foreign habit of
rushing up to her men friends with a delighted exclamation (preferably
French) and kissing them on both cheeks. When Josie Fifer, happening
back stage at a rehearsal of the star's new play, first saw her do this
a grim gleam came into her eyes.

"Bernhardt's the only woman who can spring that and get away with it,"
she said to her assistant. "Haddon's got herself sized up wrong. I'll
gamble her next play will be a failure."

And it was.

The scenery, props, and costumes of the London production of "Splendour"
were s