s coming to me, but Lordy! I hadn't ever known before what it
was. I could see the black of the men's clothes in the long parlors in
front of me, and the white of the women's necks and arms. There were
soft ends of talk trailing after the first silence, and everything was
so strange that I seemed to hear two men's voices which sounded
familiar--Latimer's silken voice, and another, a heavy, coarse bass,
that was the last to be quieted.

I fancied that when that last voice should stop I could begin, but all
at once my mind seemed to turn a somersault, and, instead of looking
out upon them, I seemed to be looking in on myself--to see a
white-faced little girl in a white dress, standing alone under a blaze
of light in a glare of red, gazing fearfully at this queer, new
audience.

Fail? Me? Not Nancy, Maggie. I just took me by the shoulders.

"Nancy Olden, you little thief!" I cried to me inside of me. "How dare
you! I'd rather you'd steal the silver on this woman's dressing-table
than cheat her out of what she expects and what's coming to her."

Nance really didn't dare. So she began.

The first one was bad. I gave 'em Duse's Francesca. You've never
heard the wailing music in that woman's voice when she says:

"There is no escape, Smaragdi.
You have said it;
The shadow is a glass to me, and God
Lets me be lost."

I gave them Duse just to show them how swell I was myself; which shows
what a ninny I was. The thing the world loves is the opposite of what
it is. The pat-pat-pat of their gloves came in to me when I got
through. They were too polite to hiss. But it wasn't necessary. I
was hissing myself. Inside of me there was a long, nasty hiss-ss-ss!

I couldn't bear it. I couldn't bear to be a failure with Latimer
listening, though out there in that queer half-light I couldn't see him
at all, but could only make out the couch where I knew he must be lying.

I just jumped into something else to retrieve myself. I can do
Carter's Du Barry to the Queen's taste, Maggie. That rotten voice of
hers, like Mother Douty's, but stronger and surer; that rocky old face
pretending to look young and beautiful inside that talented red hair of
hers; that whining "Denny! Denny!" she squawks out every other minute.
Oh, I can do Du Barry all right!

They thought I could, too, those black and white shadows out there on
the other side of the velvet curtains. But I cared less for what they
th