of twine snapped in two. Lily
found herself hanging fifty feet in the air, the two pulleys glided slowly
backward toward the stage. Jimmy stopped the machine.

"That's wrong!" cried Lily. "Let's try again. I see what it was: I forgot
to push down my foot to point the machine up. It was a slip."

However, at the next attempt, it went better. The twine broke each time,
but Lily rectified her movements:

"It's my back push! It's the propeller! It's the front-wheel!"

And, in fact, that was what it was. Jimmy and his assistants, who followed
her with their eyes, had noted the fault and Lily, too, had observed it,
in spite of the giddy flight. She was extraordinarily plucky and cool, her
eight stone of flesh and bone, unerring and exact, seemed made for the
aerobike.

"Bravo, Lily! Hurrah!" cried Jimmy.

She could have screamed for joy in the street, as she went out.

Her unparalleled stroke of luck in being chosen tickled her heart. She
felt her sense of responsibility increase and also her wish to do well; no
sooner had she left off practising than she was seized with but one idea,
to begin again:

"Eight days more!" she thought.

At night, she dreamed of backward jerks, of turning the handle-bar,
pushing the pedal. Poor Glass-Eye, cowering in a corner of the bed, had
terrible nightmares, and, in the morning, after Lily's kicks, she rose
with her ribs smarting and her shins all black and blue. That was all her
profit, for Lily had hardly any money left and was not yet drawing a
salary.

Lily submitted to all sorts of privation with a proud dignity. She would
be beholden to nobody. Soon her whole fortune would consist of her box of
lucky halfpence and a franc which she had won by turning a cartwheel, for
a bet, among artistes, in the country, to stagger the jossers. And so
their little evening meal was a scanty one. A sausage, a little fruit, a
cup of tea ... and then to bed. That was better than listening to the
owner of the Hours and all those men who propose things to you. Never,
never! Her work, her work! Lord, after what she had seen of Poland and the
Hours, it was much simpler to work, to be self-reliant. At night,
sometimes, Lily would lie awake and think ... where did that three hundred
francs of the Bijou come from? Not from the Bijou: Cataplasm's defeat had
swallowed up everything and the theater had long been without a penny;
they used to fill the house with paper distributed among the staff, with
ord