bottom of a bed or a big screen.

When they had passed the gate, they turned the screens round and leaned
them against the wall; one of them represented a badly painted tiled
stove, another the door of a country cottage, perhaps a forester's
cottage. Others a wood, a window, and a library.

She understood. It was the scenery of a play. And after a while she
recognised the rose tree from Faust.

The shed was used by the theatre for storing scenes and stage
properties; she herself had more than once stood by the side of the rose
tree, singing "Gentle flowers in the dew."

The thought that they were going to play Faust wrung her heart, but she
had one little comfort: she had never sung the principal part in it, for
the principal part is Margaret's.

"I don't mind Faust; but I shall die if they play Carmen or Aida."

And she sat and watched the change in the repertoire. She knew a
fortnight before the papers what was going to be played next. It was
amusing in a way. She knew when the Freischuetz was going to be played,
for she saw the wolves' den being brought out; she knew when they were
going to put on the Flying Dutchman, for the ship and the sea came out
of the shed; and Tannhaeuser, and Lohengrin, and many others.

But the inevitable day dawned--for the inevitable must happen. The men
had again gone into the shed (she remembered that the name of one of
them was Lindquist, and that it was his business to look after the
pulleys), and presently reappeared with a Spanish market-place. The
scene was not standing straight up, so that she could not see at once
what it was, but one of the men turned it slowly over, and when he stood
it up on its side she could see the back, which is always very ugly. And
one after the other, slowly, as if they warded to prolong the torture,
huge, black letters appeared: CARMEN. It was Carmen!

"I shall die," said the singer.

But she did not die, not even when they played Aida. But her name was
blotted out from the memory of the public, her picture disappeared from
the stationers' windows, and from the post-cards; finally her portrait
was removed from the foyer of the theatre by an unknown hand.

She could not understand how men could forget so quickly. It was quite
inexplicable! But she mourned for herself as if she were mourning a
friend who had died; and wasn't it true, that the singer, the famous
singer, was dead?

One evening she was strolling through a deserted street. At one