in addition to the
regular Saturday night performance she should hereafter play a Wednesday
matinee.

But all good things come to an end; and finally she decided to arise;
with a sigh she placed her hands on the side of the tub and lifted; with
a scream she took her hands off the side of the tub and settled back,
and felt. She discovered that this "good thing" had "come to an end" in
more ways than one; and that as far as she was able to discover "the
end" and "the good thing" were liable to remain together indefinitely;
for she had settled into that mess of paint, enamel and varnish, until
she and that bath tub had formed an attachment that nothing short of a
doctor or a plumber could separate.

For purely personal reasons she did not want to call for either the
doctor or the plumber. And much less did she want to explain her
predicament to her husband. She always had been in the habit of facing
her troubles bravely; but here was a situation where this rule was hard
to follow. Another rule she had always tried to follow was to put her
troubles behind her; but, although she was now following this rule,
somehow it brought no relief.

Meanwhile, while she sat there thinking all these things over, the paint
was setting harder than ever; ditto the lady. Something must be done;
and she had got to do it herself. So she began a sort of rocking
movement; back and forth, side to side, she twisted and writhed. She
realized, more than ever, how much she had become attached to that old
tin bath tub; she realized how it was going to pain her to break away
from it; sometimes she doubted as to whether she _could_ go away and
leave it; she wondered if she would have to go through life wearing that
darned old tin bath tub.

But she kept weaving back and forth and from side to side and little by
little, inch by inch, she could feel _something_ giving way; she was not
sure, yet, whether it was the tub, the paint or herself; but something
was giving way. And at last, with one agonizing jerk, she broke away and
arose to her feet. And then she turned and looked down into the tub to
see what had happened; and what she saw there brought a sigh of relief
to her lips; for she discovered that she was still intact; and the tub
was all there; what had given way was the paint; and gleaming up at her
from the bottom of the bath tub, like a full moon through the clouds,
was a bright and shining circle of the tin, free from all encumbrance in
the