South had lighted the house brilliantly and brought in a band.  And all classes of people poured into the theatre until it could hold no more.  I saw Mrs. Peters in one of the side-seats, with Susy’s blushing, frightened little face beside her.  George, standing back among the scenes, saw her too:  I think, indeed, it was all he did see.

There were the usual readings from Shakespeare at first.

While Madame was on, South came to us.  “Boys,” said he, “let this matter go over a few weeks.  A little more practice will do you no harm.  You can substitute some other trick, and these people will be none the wiser.”

George shrugged his shoulders impatiently:  “Nonsense!  When did you grow so chicken-hearted, South?  It is I who have to run the risk, I fancy.”

I suppose South’s uneasiness had infected me.

“I am quite willing to put it off,” I said.  I had felt gloomy and superstitious all day.  But I never ventured to oppose George more decidedly than that.

He only laughed by way of reply, and went off to dress.  South looked after him, I remember, saying what a magnificently-built fellow he was.  If we could only have seen the end of that night’s work!

As I went to my dressing-room I saw Mrs. Lloyd and her husband in one of the stage-boxes, with one or two other ladies and gentlemen.  She was plainly and darkly dressed, but to my mind she looked like a princess among them all.  I could not but wonder what interest she could have in such a rough set as we, although her husband, I confess, did judge us hardly.

After the readings came the concert part of the performance, and then what South chose to call the Moving Tableaux, which was really nothing in the world but ballet-dancing.  George and I were left to crown the whole.  I had some ordinary trapeze-work to do at first, but George was reserved for the new feat, in order that his nerves might be perfectly unshaken.  When I went out alone and bowed to the audience, I observed that Mrs. Lloyd was leaning eagerly forward, but at the first glance at my face she sank back with a look of relief, and turned away, that she might not see my exploits.  It nettled me a little, I think, yet they were worth watching.

Well, I finished, and then there was a song to give me time to cool.  I went to the side-scenes where I could be alone, for that five minutes.  I had no risk to run in the grand feat, you see, but I had George’s life in my hands.  I haven’t told you yet—­have I?—­what it was he proposed to do.

A rope was suspended from the centre of the dome, the lower end of which I held, standing in the highest gallery opposite the stage.  Above the stage hung the trapeze on which George and the two posture-girls were to be.  At a certain signal I was to let the rope go, and George, springing from the trapeze across the full width of the dome, was to catch it in mid-air, a hundred feet above the heads of the people.  You understand?  The mistake of an instant of time on either his part or mine, and death was almost certain.  The plan we had thought surest was for South to give the word, and then that both should count—­One, Two, Three!  At Three the rope fell, and he leaped.  We had practised so often that we thought we counted as one man.