followed the last encore. "Don't say anything to make me laugh.
I'm trying to look as if I had died of a broken heart."

Elise darted back just as the prompter's bell rang, and Mary, turning to
follow her to their seats in the audience, saw Miss Casey tragically
throw up her hands, with a horrified exclamation. It was not the copy of
Tennyson Elise had brought her. In her haste she had snatched up a
volume of essays bound in the same blue and gold.

"Go on!" whispered Malcolm, sternly. "Say something. At least go out and
explain the tableau in your own words. There are lots of people who
won't know what we are aiming at."

Miss Casey only wrung her hands. "Oh, I can't! I can't!" she answered,
hoarsely. "I couldn't think of a word before all those people!" As the
curtain drew slowly apart, she covered her face with her hands and sank
back out of sight in the shrubbery.

The curtain-shifter had answered the signal of the prompter's bell,
which at Miss Allison's direction was to be rung immediately after the
last applause. Neither knew of the dilemma.

A long-drawn "O-o-oh" greeted the beautiful tableau, and then there was
a silence that made Miss Allison rise half-way in her seat, to see what
had become of the interpreter. Then she sank back again, for a clear,
strong voice, not Miss Casey's, took up the story.

"And that day there was dole in Astolat.
Then rose the dumb old servitor, and the dead,
Oared by the dumb, went upward with the flood."

[Illustration: "A LONG-DRAWN 'O-O-OH' GREETED THE BEAUTIFUL TABLEAU"]

She did not know who had sprung to the rescue, but Joyce, who recognized
Mary's voice, felt a thrill of pride that she was doing it so well. It
was better than Miss Casey's rendering, for it was without any
professional frills and affectations; just the simple story told in the
simplest way by one who felt to the fullest the beauty of the picture
and the music of the poem.

The red lights flared up, and again the exclamation of pleasure swept
through the audience, for Lloyd, lying on the black bier with her hair
rippling down and the lily in her hand, might indeed have been the dead
Elaine, so ethereal and fair she seemed in that soft glow. Three times
the curtains were parted, and even then the enthusiastic guests kept
applauding.

There was a rush from the seats, and half a dozen admiring friends
pushed between the curtains to offer congratulations. But before they