dressing room and through a crowd of people, men and women with
painted faces, some beautifully, some extravagantly and strangely
dressed. They all stared. One woman shook her head. A man said:
"Search me! I never saw _her_ before."

Then Mr. Meier thrust her out in the face of a bright light. "Begin,"
he said hoarsely. "Walk over there and begin."

Quietly Cake obeyed. She had walked right into the bright light that
had drawn her so hard and so long. Of course it was time for her to
begin. And with this bright light in her face, which soon became to
her the candle in that dark room left so far behind, she fared away to
the magic land of beautiful make-believe.

And only when _Juliet_, that precocious child, sank down poisoned did
she become aware of the uproar about her. The shouts of the lodger,
"Stop--my God, stop! How do you get that way?" augmented a million
times. It was this she heard.

Slowly Cake lifted herself on her hands, dazedly she peered through
the heart of the great light that had caused her such suffering and
that she had followed faithfully so bitterly long. On the other side
she saw faces, rows and rows of them mounting up to the very roof.
Faces laughing; faces convulsed, streaming with tears; faces with eyes
fixed and wearing that same queer, strained look she had noticed
before; hundreds of faces topping each other in semicircular rows, all
different but all alike in that they were all laughing.

She rose to her knees and rested there on all fours--staring.

Laughter! A great clapping of hands rolled about her like thunder,
dying down and rising again to even greater volume. Cries of "Go on,"
assailed her ears, mingled with, "Stop, stop! I can't bear it!"

The curtain fell before her, blotting out the vision of those faces,
making the uproar slightly dimmer. Mr. Meier advanced and lifted her
to her feet. He moved weakly, exhausted with mirth.

"Even Noyes," he gasped. "He--he can't help it. Oh, my goo-hood
Gaw-hud!"

Cake looked away from him to the men and women that thronged about
her. The same faces that had turned to her such a short while ago; but
now, how different!

"Oh, don't criticise," one woman cried. "Hand it to her! She can't be
beat. She's the one that comes once in a century to show the rest of
us what really can be done."

"Meier," shouted a man. "Meier--she'll have to go back, Meier; she's
stopped the show."

Quiet and very still, Cake drew away.

It seemed to he