I know," wailed the fairy, "but if you would
please come and help us just a minute! Could you?"
"Why, yes, of course." Billy rose to her feet, still wearily.
Arkwright touched her arm. She turned and saw his face. It was very
white--so white that her eyes widened in surprised questioning.
As if answering the unspoken words, the man shook his head.
"I can't, now, of course," he said. "But there _is_ something I want to
say--a story I want to tell you--after to-morrow, perhaps. May I?"
To Billy, the tremor of his voice, the suffering in his eyes, and the
"story" he was begging to tell could have but one interpretation: Alice
Greggory. Her face, therefore, was a glory of tender sympathy as she
reached out her hand in farewell.
"Of course you may," she cried. "Come any time after to-morrow night,
please," she smiled encouragingly, as she turned toward the stage.
Behind her, Arkwright stumbled twice as he walked up the incline toward
the outer door--stumbled, not because of the semi-darkness of the little
theatre, but because of the blinding radiance of a girl's illumined face
which he had, a moment before, read all unknowingly exactly wrong.
A little more than twenty-four hours later, Billy Neilson, in her own
room, drew a long breath of relief. It was twelve o'clock on the night
of the twentieth, and the operetta was over.
To Billy, life was eminently worth living to-night. Her head did not
ache, her throat was not sore, her shoe did not hurt, her dress had
been mended so successfully by Aunt Hannah, and with such comforting
celerity, that long before night one would never have suspected the
filmy thing had known the devastating tread of any man's foot. Better
yet, the soprano had sung exactly to key, the alto had shrieked
"Beware!" to thrilling purpose, Arkwright had shown all his old charm
and vim, and the chorus had been prodigies of joyousness and marvels
of lightness. Even the lovers had lost their stiffness, while the two
earth-bound fairies of the night before had found so amiable a meeting
point that their solos sounded, to the uninitiated, very like, indeed,
a duet. The operetta was, in short, a glorious and gratifying success,
both artistically and financially. Nor was this all that, to Billy, made
life worth the living: Arkwright had begged permission that evening to
come up the following afternoon to tell her his "story"; and Billy, who
was so joyously confident that this story meant the fin
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