When the curtain went down she came off raging.

“What was that?  Who was that standing in the wings?  How dare any one stand there!  Everybody knows I can’t have any one in the wings.  Staring!  It ruined my scene to-night.  Where’s McCabe?  Tell Mr. Hahn I want to see him.  Who was it?  Staring at me like a ghost!”

Josie had crept away, terrified, contrite, and yet resentful.  But the next week saw her back at the theatre, though she took care to stay in the shadows.

She was waiting for the black velvet dress.  It was more than a dress to her.  It was infinitely more than a stage costume.  It was the habit of glory.  It epitomised all that Josie Fifer had missed of beauty and homage and success.

The play ran on, and on, and on.  Sarah Haddon was superstitious about the black gown.  She refused to give it up for a new one.  She insisted that if ever she discarded the old black velvet for a new the run of the play would stop.  She assured Hahn that its shabbiness did not show from the front.  She clung to it with that childish unreasonableness that is so often found in people of the stage.

But Josie waited patiently.  Dozens of costumes passed through her hands.  She saw plays come and go.  Dresses came to her whose lining bore the mark of world-famous modistes.  She hung them away, or refurbished them if necessary with disinterested conscientiousness.  Sometimes her caustic comment, as she did so, would have startled the complacency of the erstwhile wearers of the garments.  Her knowledge of the stage, its artifices, its pretence, its narrowness, its shams, was widening and deepening.  No critic in bone-rimmed glasses and evening clothes was more scathingly severe than she.  She sewed on satin.  She mended fine lace.  She polished stage jewels.  And waited.  She knew that one day her patience would be rewarded.  And then, at last came the familiar voice over the phone:  “Hello, Fifer!  McCabe talking.”

“Well?”

“‘Splendour’ closes Saturday.  Haddon says she won’t play in this heat.  They’re taking it to London in the autumn.  The stuff’ll be up Monday, early.”

Josie Fifer turned away from the telephone with a face so radiant that one of her sewing women, looking up, was moved to comment.

“Got some good news, Miss Fifer?”

“‘Splendour’ closes this week.”

“Well, my land!  To look at you a person would think you’d been losing money at the box office every night it ran.”

The look was still on her face when Monday morning came.  She was sewing on a dress just discarded by Adelaide French, the tragedienne.  Adelaide’s maid was said to be the hardest-worked woman in the profession.  When French finished with a costume it was useless as a dress; but it was something historic, like a torn and tattered battle flag—­an emblem.

McCabe, box under his arm, stood in the doorway.  Josie Fifer stood up so suddenly that the dress on her lap fell to the floor.  She stepped over it heedlessly, and went toward McCabe, her eyes on the pasteboard box.  Behind McCabe stood two more men, likewise box-laden.