Things went well with Truda and Vaucher and all the company for the next two days.  Never had she been so amenable to those who charged themselves with her interests, never so generally and mildly amiable to those who had to live at her orders.  But none of those who came in contact with her failed to observe a new note in her manner.  It was not that she was softer or gentler; rather it seemed that she was more remote, something absent and thoughtful, with a touch of raptness that lent the true air of inspiration to her acting.  Her spare time she spent with the baby—­she and Marie, her maid, playing with it, making a plaything of it, ministering to it, and obeying it.  It had never cried once since Truda had taken it in her arms, but adapted itself with the soundest skill to its surroundings and companions.

“I found it ten years too late,” said Truda once.

Her maid looked at her curiously.

“It is surprising that Madame should not have found one before,” she said.

Those two days were placid and full of peace, quiet with the lull of emptiness.  But in them Truda did not forget.  She was realizing herself, and her capacity to deal with a situation that would not be devised to show her talents.  She felt that she stood, for the first time, on the threshold of brisk, perilous, actual life, of that life which was burlesqued, exaggerated, in the plays in which she acted.  It was expectancy that softened her eyes and lit her face with dreams—­expectancy and exhilaration.

She was about to be born into the world.

The summons came suddenly on the evening of the second day.  Even as she drove to the theatre, Truda had noted how the streets were uneasy, how men stood about in groups and were in the first stages of drunkenness.  The play that night was that harrowing thing La Tosca; she was dressed for her part when the word came, written on a scrap of paper:  “It is to-night.  I am waiting at the stage door.”  She pondered for a few moments over it, then reached for her cloak and drew it on over her brilliant stage dress.

“Find Vaucher,” she said to her maid.  “Tell him I cannot play to-night.  He must put on my understudy.  Say I am ill.”

The maid, startled out of her composure, threw up her hands.

“But, Madame——!” she cried.

Truda waved her aside.  “Lose no time,” she ordered.  “Tell Vaucher I am ill.  And then go back to the baby.”

She wasted no more words on the woman, but swept forth from the room and down the draughty ill-lit passage to the stage-door.  Its guardian, staggered at her appearance, let her out; on the pavement outside, muffled to the eyes like a man that evades observation, was the big young Jew.  He was gazing out over the square; her fingers on his arm made him look round with a start.

“I am here,” she said.  “Now tell me.”

With eyes that glanced about warily while he spoke, he told her quickly, in low tones of haste.