, was empty as the curtain
rose. Two hands, dead white under their load of emeralds, held the black
hangings over the centre doorway--then parted them brusquely. Stonehouse
heard the audience stir in their seats, but there was only a faint
applause. No one had come to the theatre for any other purpose than to
see her, but they knew her history. And, after all, they were
respectable people.

Cosgrave caught him by the arm.

"Oh, my word--it's her right enough!"

She stood there, motionless, her fair head with its monstrous crest of
many-coloured ostrich feathers flaming against the dead background. Her
dress was impudent. It winked at its own transparent pretence at
covering a body which was, in fact, too slender, too nervously alive to
be quite beautiful (Stonehouse remembered her legs--the long, thin legs
in the parti-coloured tights, like sticks of peppermint, belabouring the
rotund sides of her imperturbable pony). But her jewels clothed her.
Their authentic fire seemed to blaze out of herself--to be fed by her.
And each one of them, no doubt, had its romance--its scandal. That rope
of pearls in itself was a king's ransom. People nudged each other. It
was part of the show that she should flaunt them.

She had been a plain child, and now, if she was really pretty at all, it
was after the fashion of most French women, without right or reason, by
force of some secret magnetism that was not even physical. Her wide
mouth was open in a rather vacant, childish smile, and she was looking up
towards the gallery as though she were expecting something. "Hallo,
everyone!" she said tentatively, gaily. They stared back at her, stolid
and antagonistic, defying her. She began to laugh then, as she laughed
every night at the same moment, spontaneously, shrilly, helplessly, until
suddenly she had them. It was like a whirlwind. It spared no one. They
were like dead leaves dancing helplessly in its midst. Even Stonehouse
felt it at his throat, a choking, senseless laughter.

He saw Cosgrave lean forward, and in the half light he had a queer,
startled look. With his thick red hair and small white face he might
have been some sick thing of the woods scenting the air in answer to
far-off familiar piping's. He made Robert Stonehouse see the faun in
Frances Wilmot's room, the room itself and Frances Wilmot, with her chin
resting in her hands, gazing into the fire. The picture was gone almost
before he knew what he h