Grey, going with her husband and Mrs. Sheppard down Broadway, from their hotel, had a fancy that the world was so cheerfully, heartily at work, that the night was no longer needed.  Overhead, the wind from the yet frozen hills swept in such strong currents, the great city throbbed with such infinite kinds of motion, and down in the harbor yonder the rush of couriers came and went incessantly from the busy world without.  Grey was a country-girl:  in this throbbing centre of human life she felt suddenly lost, atom-like,—­drew her breath quickly, as she clung to Paul’s arm.  The world was so vast, was hurrying on so fast.  She must get to work in earnest:  why, one must justify her right to live, here.

Mrs. Sheppard, as she plodded solidly along, took in the whole blue air and outgoing ocean, and the city, with its white palaces and gleaming lights.

“People look happy here,” she said.  “Even Grey laughs more, going down the streets.  Nothing talks of the war here.”

Paul looked down into the brown depths of the eyes that were turned towards him.

“It is a good, cheery world, ours, after all.  More laughing than crying in it,—­when people find out their right place, and get into it.”

Mrs. Sheppard said, “Umph?” Kentuckians don’t like abstract propositions.

They stopped before a wide-open door, in a by-street. Not an opera-house; one of the haunts of the “legitimate drama,” Yet the posters assured the public in every color, that La petite Elise, the beautiful debutante, etc., etc., would sing, etc., etc.  Grey’s hand tightened on her husband’s arm.

“This is the place,”—­her face burning scarlet.

A pretty little theatre:  softly lighted, well and quietly filled.  Quietly toned, too, the dresses of the women in the boxes,—­of that neutral, subdued caste that showed they belonged to the grade above fashion.  People of rank tastes did not often go there.  The little Kentuckian, with her emphatic, sham-hating face, and Grey, whose simple, calm outlook on the world made her last year’s bonnet and cloak dwindle into such irrelevant trifles, did not misbecome the place.  Others might go there to fever out ennui, or with fouler fancies.  Grey did not know.  The play was a simple little thing; its meaning was pure as a child’s song; there was a good deal of fun in it.  Grey laughed with everybody else; she would ask God to bless her to-night none the worse for that.  It had some touches of pathos in it, and she cried, and saw some men about her with the smug New-York-city face doing the very same,—­not just as she did, but glowering at the footlights, and softly blowing their noses.  Then the music came, and La petite Elise.  Grey drew back where she could not see her.  Blecker peered through his glass at every line and motion, as she came out from the eternal castle in the back scene.  Any gnawing power or gift she had had found vent, certainly, now.  Every poise and inflection said, “Here I am what I am,—­fully what God made me, at last:  no more, no less.”  God had made her an actress.  Why, He knows.  The Great Spirit of Love says to the toad in your gutter,—­“Thou, too, art my servant, in whom, fulfilling the work I give, I am well pleased.”