ith a questioning glance at Van Bibber, in whom she
still feared to find the disguised agent of a Children's Aid Society.
Van Bibber only nodded in reply, and did not answer her, because he
found he could not very well, for he was looking a long way ahead at
what the future was to bring to the confiding little being at his side,
and thinking of the evil knowledge and temptations that would mar the
beauty of her quaintly sweet face, and its strange mark of gentleness
and refinement. Outside he could hear his friend Lester shouting the
refrain of his new topical song, and the laughter and the hand-clapping
came in through the wings and open door, broken but tumultuous.

"Does she come of professional people?" Van Bibber asked, dropping into
the vernacular. He spoke softly, not so much that he might not disturb
the child, but that she might not understand what he said.

"Yes," the woman answered, shortly, and bent her head to smooth out the
child's stage dress across her knees.

Van Bibber touched the little girl's head with his hand and found that
she was asleep, and so let his hand rest there, with the curls between
his fingers. "Are--are you her mother?" he asked, with a slight
inclination of his head. He felt quite confident she was not; at
least, he hoped not.

The woman shook her head. "No," she said.

"Who is her mother?"

The woman looked at the sleeping child and then up at him almost
defiantly. "Ida Clare was her mother," she said.

Van Bibber's protecting hand left the child as suddenly as though
something had burned it, and he drew back so quickly that her head
slipped from his arm, and she awoke and raised her eyes and looked up
at him questioningly. He looked back at her with a glance of the
strangest concern and of the deepest pity. Then he stooped and drew
her towards him very tenderly, put her head back in the corner of his
arm, and watched her in silence while she smiled drowsily and went to
sleep again.

"And who takes care of her now?" he asked.

The woman straightened herself and seemed relieved. She saw that the
stranger had recognized the child's pedigree and knew her story, and
that he was not going to comment on it. "I do," she said. "After the
divorce Ida came to me," she said, speaking more freely. "I used to be
in her company when she was doing 'Aladdin,' and then when I left the
stage and started to keep an actors' boarding-house, she came to me.
She lived on with us a ye