It was very late when I arrived at my cousin Sullivan’s much advertised reception.  I had wished not to go at all, simply because I was inexperienced and nervous; but both he and his wife were so good-natured and so obviously anxious to be friendly, that I felt bound to appear, if only for a short time.  As I stood in the first room, looking vaguely about me at the lively throng of resplendent actresses who chattered and smiled so industriously and with such abundance of gesture to the male acquaintances who surrounded them, I said to myself that I was singularly out of place there.

I didn’t know a soul, and the stream of arrivals having ceased, neither Sullivan nor Emmeline was immediately visible.  The moving picture was at once attractive and repellent to me.  It became instantly apparent that the majority of the men and women there had but a single interest in life, that of centring attention upon themselves; and their various methods of reaching this desirable end were curious and wonderful in the extreme.  For all practical purposes, they were still on the boards which they had left but an hour or two before.  It seemed as if they regarded the very orchestra in the light of a specially contrived accompaniment to their several actions and movements.  As they glanced carelessly at me, I felt that they held me as a foreigner, as one outside that incredible little world of theirs which they call “the profession.”  And so I felt crushed, with a faint resemblance to a worm.  You see, I was young.

I walked through towards the main salon, and in the doorway between the two rooms I met a girl of striking appearance, who was followed by two others.  I knew her face well, having seen it often in photograph shops; it was the face of Marie Deschamps, the popular divette of the Diana Theatre, the leading lady of Sullivan’s long-lived musical comedy, “My Queen.”  I needed no second glance to convince me that Miss Deschamps was a very important personage indeed, and, further, that a large proportion of her salary of seventy-five pounds a week was expended in the suits and trappings of triumph.  If her dress did not prove that she was on the topmost bough of the tree, then nothing could.  Though that night is still recent history, times have changed.  Divettes could do more with three hundred a month then than they can with eight hundred now.

As we passed she examined me with a curiosity whose charm was its frankness.  Of course, she put me out of countenance, particularly when she put her hand on my sleeve.  Divettes have the right to do these things.

“I know who you are,” she said, laughing and showing her teeth.  “You are dear old Sully’s cousin; he pointed you out to me the other night when you were at the Diana.  Now, don’t say you aren’t, or I shall look such a fool; and for goodness’ sake don’t say you don’t know me—­because everyone knows me, and if they don’t they ought to.”

I was swept away by the exuberance of her attack, and, blushing violently, I took the small hand which she offered, and assured her that I was in fact Sullivan Smith’s cousin, and her sincere admirer.