climax a stage policeman opportunely appeared and moved the lively songster on for obstructing the imaginary traffic of an imaginary Bond Street.  The house received the new number with genial enthusiasm, and mingled its applause with demands for an earlier favourite.  The orchestra struck up the familiar air, and in a few moments the smart errand-boy, transformed now into a smart jockey, was singing “They quaff the gay bubbly in Eccleston Square” to an audience that hummed and nodded its unstinted approval.

The next number but one was the Gorla Mustelford debut, and the house settled itself down to yawn and fidget and chatter for ten or twelve minutes while a troupe of talented Japanese jugglers performed some artistic and quite uninteresting marvels with fans and butterflies and lacquer boxes.  The interval of waiting was not destined, however, to be without its interest; in its way it provided the one really important and dramatic moment of the evening.  One or two uniforms and evening toilettes had already made their appearance in the Imperial box; now there was observable in that quarter a slight commotion, an unobtrusive reshuffling and reseating, and then every eye in the suddenly quiet semi-darkened house focussed itself on one figure.  There was no public demonstration from the newly-loyal, it had been particularly wished that there should be none, but a ripple of whisper went through the vast audience from end to end.  Majesty had arrived.  The Japanese marvel-workers went through their display with even less attention than before.  Lady Shalem, sitting well in the front of her box, lowered her observant eyes to her programme and her massive bangles.  The evidence of her triumph did not need staring at.

CHAPTER IX:  AN EVENING “TO BE REMEMBERED”

To the uninitiated or unappreciative the dancing of Gorla Mustelford did not seem widely different from much that had been exhibited aforetime by exponents of the posturing school.  She was not naturally graceful of movement, she had not undergone years of arduous tutelage, she had not the instinct for sheer joyous energy of action that is stored in some natures; out of these unpromising negative qualities she had produced a style of dancing that might best be labelled a conscientious departure from accepted methods.  The highly imaginative titles that she had bestowed on her dances, the “Life of a fern,” the “Soul-dream of a topaz,” and so forth, at least gave her audience and her critics something to talk about.  In themselves they meant absolutely nothing, but they induced discussion, and that to Gorla meant a great deal.  It was a season of dearth and emptiness in the footlights and box-office world, and her performance received a welcome that would scarcely have befallen it in a more crowded and prosperous day.  Her success, indeed, had been waiting for her, ready-made, as far as the managerial profession was concerned, and nothing had been left