oo busy."

"I'm sure you weren't too busy for one thing: reading the papers for
your notices."

Victoria shook her head, smiling. "There you're mistaken. The first
morning after I danced at the Palace Theatre, I asked to see the papers
they had in my boarding-house, because I hoped so much that English
people would like me, and I wanted to be a success. But afterwards I
didn't bother. I don't understand British politics, you see--how could
I?--and I hardly know any English people, so I wasn't very interested in
their papers."

Again Stephen was relieved. But he felt driven by one of his strange new
impulses to tell her his name, and watch her face while he told it.

"'Curiouser and curiouser,' as our friend Alice would say," he laughed.
"No newspaper paragraphs, and a boarding-house instead of a fashionable
hotel. What was your manager thinking about?"

"I had no manager of my very own," said Victoria. "I 'exploited' myself.
It costs less to do that. When people in America liked my dancing I got
an offer from London, and I accepted it and made all the arrangements
about going over. It was quite easy, you see, because there were only
costumes to carry. My scenery is so simple, they either had it in the
theatres or got something painted: and the statues in the studio scene,
and the sculptor, needed very few rehearsals. In Paris they had only
one. It was all I had time for, after I arrived. The lighting wasn't
difficult either, and though people told me at first there would be
trouble unless I had my own man, there never was any, really. In my
letters to the managers I gave the dates when I could come to their
theatres, how long I could stay, and all they must do to get things
ready. The Paris engagement was made only a little while beforehand. I
wanted to pass through there, so I was glad to accept the offer and earn
extra money which I thought I might need by and by."

"What a mercenary star!" Stephen spoke teasingly; but in truth he could
not make the girl out.

She took the accusation with a smile. "Yes, I am mercenary, I suppose,"
she confessed with unashamed frankness, "but not entirely for myself. I
shouldn't like to be that! I told you how I've been looking forward
always to one end. And now, just when that end may be near, how foolish
I should be to spend a cent on unnecessary things! Why, I'd have felt
_wicked_ living in an expensive hotel, and keeping a maid, when I could
be comfortable in a Bloomsbury b