ew from the frantic turmoil of work, and fled to visit
the singers, and drink in more comfort. The only person who dashed her
hopes was Miss Enid Mardon, who was a great artist but by nature a
pessimist, ultra critical, full of satire and alarmingly outspoken.

"I tell you honestly," she said, looking at Charmian with fatalistic
eyes, "I don't believe in it. But I'll do my best."

"But I thought you were delighted with the first act. Surely Monsieur
Gillier told me--"

"Oh, I only spoke to him about the libretto. That's a masterpiece. Did
you ever see such a dress as that elephant Haynes expects me to wear for
the third act?"

"Really Miss Mardon's impossible!" Charmian was saying a moment later to
Alston Lake.

"Why, Mrs. Charmian?"

"Oh, I don't know! She always looks on the dark side."

"With eyes like hers what else can she do? Isn't it going stunningly?"

"Alston, I must tell you--you're an absolute darling!"

She nearly kissed him. A bell sounded.

"Third act!" exclaimed Alston, in his resounding baritone.

Charmian escaped, feeling much more hopeful, indeed almost elated.
Alston was right. With eyes like hers how could Enid Mardon anticipate
good things?

Nevertheless Charmian remembered that she had called the libretto a
masterpiece.

Oh! the agony of these swiftly changing moods! She felt as if she were
being tossed from one to another by some cruel giant. She tried to look
forward. She said to herself, "Very soon we shall know! All this will be
at an end."

But when the third act was finished she felt as if never could there be
an end to her acute nervous anxiety. For the third act did not go well.
The locusts were all wrong. The lighting did not do. Most of the
"effects" missed fire. There were stoppages, there were arguments, there
was a row between Miss Mardon and Signor Meroni. Passages were re-tried,
chaos seemed to descend upon the stage, engulfing the opera and all who
had anything to do with it. Charmian grew cold with despair.

"Thank God Adelaide did go away!" she said to herself at half-past one
in the morning.

She turned her head and saw Mrs. Shiffney and Jonson Ramer sitting in
the stalls not far from her. Mrs. Shiffney made a friendly gesture,
lifting up her right hand. Charmian returned it, and set her teeth.

"What does it matter? I don't care!"

The act ended as it had begun in chaos. In the finale something went all
wrong in the orchestra, and the whole thing had to be