“I’m better; I mustn’t be late at my next shop,” she murmured apologetically as the number and the music were changed back.

“Ah, she’s come—­she was late,” came the murmurs of the audience as it stirred in excited expectation.

She flung on roguish, feverish, diabolical, seductive in low-cut bodice pranked with flowers.  It was a frenzy of impromptu extravagance, dazzling even the orchestra; each line accentuated by new gesture, the verses supplemented by new monologue; a miracle of chic and improvisation, and the house rose at it.  Out of the mist before her eyes thunder seemed to come in great roars and crashes.  She almost groped her way to the wing.

She was recalled.  The mist cleared.  She bowed direct at him, smiling defiance from her sparkling eyes.  He was applauding with his hands, his stick, his lungs!  Was it possible?—­yes, he had not recognised her!

Now came a new revulsion.  Again she felt herself saved.  She sang her other songs straight at him, and exaggerated them equally, half to tempt Providence, half as a bold way of keeping Eileen still concealed.  She heard his companion chuckling, “By Jove, Willie, she’s mashed on you,” as she threw a farewell kiss towards him.  Then she hurried to her dressing-room and took out his letter.  She had transferred it to the pocket of her theatrical gown, but had not as yet found time to finish it.  Even before she re-perused it, another emotion had begun to possess her, a rush of resentment.  So this was how he amused himself while waiting to clasp her in his arms!  How would he ever live through the hours till Sunday afternoon, forsooth!  She was jealous of the applause he lavished on Nelly O’Neill, incensed at his levity, at his immaculate evening-dress, at his white orchid.  How dare he be so gay and debonair?  Her anger rose as she read his protestations, his romantic professions.  “O my darling, I shall sit up all night, thinking of you, re-reading all your dear letters, recalling our past, picturing our future.  In short, as old Landor puts it:—­

  “’A night of memories and of sighs
    I consecrate to thee.’”

She crumpled the paper in her hand.  There was a knock at the door; Fossy poked his head in.  He had risen in the world of Halls, even as Nelly O’Neill.

“Might I present two friends of mine?  They want so much to know you.”

“You know I never see anybody, and that I have to hurry off.”

“Then, I was to give you this bouquet.”

He handed in a costly floral mass.  Amid it lay a card, “Colonel Doherty.”  She crumpled his letter more viciously.

“Tell them I can give them ten minutes only.  Oh, Fossy, it’s an amusing Show, isn’t it?”

“It was a rattling good show,” said Fossy, half puzzled.  “Come in, boys.”

Entered the Anglo-Indian twain with shining faces and shirt-fronts, cheroots politely lowered.

“Oh, smoke away, gentlemen,” cried Nelly O’Neill, facing them in all the dazzle of her flesh and the crudity of her stage-paint, and her over-lustrous eyes, “don’t mind me.  Which of you is the Colonel?”