rouge laid on each cheek: under the
tulle-body the same old half-sickness; the same throbbing back-tooth
threatening to ache. The room was small, triangular: a striped, reddish
cotton carpet on the floor, a door with a brass handle, my bandbox open
on a chair, a basin with soapy water, soiled towels, two dripping
tallow-candles: in short, a dressing-room in a theatre. Outside, wheels,
pulleys, pasteboard castles, trees, chairs, more bony women, more
chalk, more tulle. Monsieur in a greasy green dressing-gown odorous of
tobacco, swearing at a boy with blear eyes,--a scene-shifter. The
orchestra tuning beyond the foot-lights: how vilely the first violin
slurred over that second passage! "Life's Prophecy," I called it; and
that "Vision of Heaven," the trombonist came in always false on the
bass, because, as Monsieur said, he had always two brandy-slings too
much. Beyond was "the world," passive, to be acted upon; the
parquet,--ranged seats of young men with the flash-stamp on them
from their thick noses to the broad-checked trousers; the
dress-circle,--young girls with their eyes and brains full-facing their
attendant sweethearts, and a side-giggle for the stage; crude faces in
the gallery, tamed faces lower down; gray and red and black and
tow-colored heads full of myriad teeming thoughts of business, work,
pleasure, outside of this: treble and tenor notes wandering through
them, dying almost ere born; touching what soul behind the dress and
brain-work? and touching it how? Ah, well! "I am going to fulfil my
mission." I said that, again and again, as I stood waiting. "Now. This
is it. I take it up." But my blood would not be made to thrill.

"This wart must be covered," said a walking-lady in red paper-muslin,
touching the mole on my lip with Meen Fun. M. Vaux tapped at the
door,--a sly, oily smile on his mouth.

"We are honored to-night. Be prepared, my dear Madam, for surprises in
your audience. Your husband is in the house,--and his son, Robert
Manning."

I put up my hands in the vain effort to cover the bare neck and
shoulders,--then, going back into the dressing-room, sat down, without a
word. I remember how the two tallow-candles flared and sputtered, as I
sat staring at them; how on the other side of the brass-handled door the
play went on, the pulleys creaked, and the trombones grated, and the
other women in tulle and chalk capered and sang, and that at last the
stuffy voice of the call-boy outside cried, "Mari