eyes the
caress that his lips would so much have preferred to give--under more
propitious circumstances.

CHAPTER XXV. THE OPERETTA

The sixteenth, seventeenth, and eighteenth of February were, for Billy,
and for all concerned in the success of the operetta, days of hurry,
worry, and feverish excitement, as was to be expected, of course. Each
afternoon and every evening saw rehearsals in whole, or in parts. A
friend of the Club-president's sister-in-law-a woman whose husband was
stage manager of a Boston theatre--had consented to come and "coach"
the performers. At her appearance the performers--promptly thrown into
nervous spasms by this fearsome nearness to the "real thing"--forgot
half their cues, and conducted themselves generally like frightened
school children on "piece day," much to their own and every one else's
despair. Then, on the evening of the nineteenth, came the final dress
rehearsal on the stage of the pretty little hall that had been engaged
for the performance of the operetta.

The dress rehearsal, like most of its kind, was, for every one, nothing
but a nightmare of discord, discouragement, and disaster. Everybody's
nerves were on edge, everybody was sure the thing would be a "flat
failure." The soprano sang off the key, the alto forgot to shriek
"Beware, beware!" until it was so late there was nothing to beware of;
the basso stepped on Billy's trailing frock and tore it; even the tenor,
Arkwright himself, seemed to have lost every bit of vim from his acting.
The chorus sang "Oh, be joyful!" with dirge-like solemnity, and danced
as if legs and feet were made of wood. The lovers, after the fashion of
amateur actors from time immemorial, "made love like sticks."

Billy, when the dismal thing had dragged its way through the final
note, sat "down front," crying softly in the semi-darkness while she
was waiting for Alice Greggory to "run it through just once more" with a
pair of tired-faced, fluffy-skirted fairies who could _not_ learn that a
duet meant a _duet_--not two solos, independently hurried or retarded as
one's fancy for the moment dictated.

To Billy, just then, life did not look to be even half worth the living.
Her head ached, her throat was going-to-be-sore, her shoe hurt, and her
dress--the trailing frock that had been under the basso's foot--could
not possibly be decently repaired before to-morrow night, she was sure.

Bad as these things were, however, they were only the inti