kes
by the same fool clown and the solemn dubs. But they had a girl with
'em--a young thing. She didn't play very well. She had a way with her,
though--seemed kind of disgusted with life and the rest of the troupe
and the audience. And she had a right to be disgusted, for she was as
pretty as--I don't know what. She was just beautiful--slim and limber
and long--what you might imagine a nymph would look like if she got
loose in a music-hall.

"I was crazy about her. If I could ever have written a poem about
anybody, it would have been about her. She struck me as something sort
of--well, divine. She wore the usual, and not much of it--low neck,
bare arms, and--tights. But I kind of revered her; she was so dog-on
pretty.

"When the drop fell on that act I was lost. I was an orphan for true.
I couldn't rest till I saw the manager and asked him to take me back
and introduce me to her. He gave me a nasty grin and said he didn't
run that kind of a theater, and I said I'd knock his face off if he
thought I thought he did. Well, he gave in finally and took me back. I
fell down the side-aisle steps and sprawled along the back of the
boxes and stumbled up the steps to the stage.

"And then I met Mamise--that was her name on the program--Mamise. She
was pretty and young as ever, but she wasn't a nymph any longer. She
was just a young, painted thing, a sulky, disgusted girl. And she was
feeding a big monkey--a chimpanzee or something. It was sitting on a
bicycle and smoking a cigar--getting ready to go on the stage.

"It was so human and so unhuman and so ugly, and she was so graceful,
that it seemed like a sort of satire on humanity. The manager said,
'Say, Mamise, this gentleman here wants to pays his respecks.' She
looked up in a sullen way, and the chimpanzee showed his teeth at me,
and I mumbled something about expecting to see the name Mamise up in
the big electric lights.

"She gave me a look that showed she thought I was a darned fool, and I
agreed with her then--and since. She said, 'Much obliged' in a
contemptuous contralto and--and turned to the other monkey.

"The interview was finished. I backed over a scene-prop, knocked down
a stand of Indian-clubs, and got out into the alley. I was mad at her
at first, but afterward I always respected her for snubbing me. I
never saw her again, never saw her name again. As for the big electric
lights, I was a punk prophet. But her name has stood out in electric
lights in my--