t in a few days the curious
cat-like instinct of the unconscious coquette awakened in me, and I began
very gently to try my claws.

I wished very much to know if he were jealous, as I had been told that
real lovers were always so; and, naturally, I did not wish mine to fall
short of any of the time-honored attributes of loverdom. Therefore I, one
morning, selected for experimental use a man whose volume of speech was a
terror to all. Had he been put to the sword, he would have talked to the
swordsman till the final blow cut his speech. He was most unattractive,
too, in appearance, being one of those actors who get shaved after
rehearsal instead of before it, thus gaining a reputation for untidiness
that facts may not always justify--but he served my purpose all the
better for that.

I deliberately placed myself at his side; I was only a ballet-girl, but I
had two good ears--I was welcome. Conversation, or rather the monologue,
burst forth. Standing at the side of the stage, with rehearsal going on,
he of course spoke low. I watched for Frank's arrival. He came, I heard
his cheery "Good-morning, ladies! good-morning, gentlemen!" and then he
started toward me, but I heard nothing, saw nothing of _him_. My upraised
eyes, as wide as I possibly could make them, were fixed upon the face of
the talker. Yet, with a jump of the heart, I knew the brightness had gone
from Frank's face, the spring from his step. I smiled as sweetly as I
knew how; I seemed to hang upon the words of the untidy one, and oh! if
Frank could only have known what those words were; how I was being
assured that he, the speaker, had that very morning succeeded in stopping
a leaky hole in his shoe by melting a piece of india-rubber over and on
it, and that not a drop of water had penetrated when he had walked
through the rain-puddles; and right there, like music, there came to my
listening ear a word of four letters--a forbidden word, but one full of
consolation to the distressed male; a word beginning with "d," and for
fear that you may think it was "dear," why, I will be explicit and say
that it was "damn!" and that it was from the anger-whitened lips of
Frank, who during the morning gave not only to me, but to all lookers-on,
most convincing proof of his jealousy, and that was the beginning of my
experiments.

I did this, to see if it would make him angry. I did that, to see if it
would please him. Sometimes I scratched him with my investigating claws,