boxes with the
plain paper; but Yvonne came twice on every box--once in large on the
inside, once in small on the outside, with a gummed projection to be
stuck down after the cigars were in. He fell to recalling what he had
read of her--the convent education that had kept her chaste and
distinguished beneath all her stage deviltry, the long Lenten fasts
she endured (as brought to light by the fishmonger's bill she disputed
in open court), the crucifix concealed upon her otherwise not too
reticent person, the adorable French accent with which she enraptured
the dudes, the palatial private car in which she traversed the States,
with its little chapel giving on the bathroom; the swashbuckling
Marquis de St. Roquiere, who had crossed the Channel after her, and
the maid he had once kidnapped in mistake for the mistress; the
diamond necklace presented by the Rajah of Singapuri, stolen at a
soiree in San Francisco, and found afterwards as single stones in a
low 'hock-shop' in New Orleans.

And despite all this glitter of imposing images a subconscious thought
was forcing itself more and more clearly to the surface of his mind.
That aureole of golden hair, those piquant dark eyes! The Yvonne the
cheap illustrated papers had made him familiar with had lacked this
revelation of colour! But no, the idea was insane!

This scintillating celebrity his lost Gittel!

Bah! Misery had made him childish. Goldwater had, indeed, blossomed
out since the days of his hired hall in Spitalfields, but his fame
remained exclusively Yiddish and East-side. But Gittel!

How could that obscure rush-light of the London Ghetto Theatre have
blazed into the Star of Paris and New York?

This Lent-keeping demoiselle the little Polish Jewess who had munched
Passover cake at his table in the far-off happy days! This gilded idol
the impecunious Gittel he had caressed!

'You ever seen this Yvonne Rupert?' he inquired of his neighbour, a
pock-marked, spectacled young woman, who, as record-breaker of the
establishment, had refused to join the strike of the mere
hundred-and-fifty a day.

The young woman swiftly drew a knife from the wooden pail beside her,
and deftly scraped at a rough hinge as she replied: 'No, but I guess
she's the actress who gets all the flowers, and won't pay for 'em.'

He saw she had mixed up the two lawsuits, but the description seemed
to hit off his Gittel to the life. Yes, Gittel had always got all the
flowers of life, and dodge