"We have heard what you said and your wish does you credit. We can
prolong your grandmother's life for some time. But to make her live
forever you must find The Castle of Life."

"Madam," replied Grazioso, "I will start at once."

"It is four long days' journey from here," the Fairy of the Woods
continued. "If you can accomplish each of these four days' journey
without turning out of your road and if, on arriving at the castle, you
can answer the three questions that an invisible voice will ask you,
you will receive there all that you desire. For there the fountain of
immortality will be found."

Then slowly the great stage curtain descended. And this was the end of
Polly's part in the performance, though one more ordeal was to follow.
And though she welcomed this, Polly also dreaded it more than anything
else. Always a curtain call came at the close of this scene, when she
and the Fairy of the Water, each holding a hand of Grazioso's, must
step forth to the footlights and for an instant face the audience,
smiling their thanks for the applause.

But Polly had never been able to summon a smile, for at this moment she
had always become self-conscious. The glamour and the excitement of
the theater suddenly deserted her and she felt not like a fairy or
anything fantastic, but only like Polly O'Neill, a very untrained and
frightened girl who was deceiving her family and friends to have this
first taste of stage life, and who might suffer almost any kind of
consequences: imprisonment in some boarding school, Polly feared, where
she might never again be allowed any liberty or an equal imprisonment
in Woodford, with no mention of the theater made in her presence as
long as she lived. For Polly could not determine to what lengths her
mother's anger and disapproval of her conduct might lead her. And she
did mean to make her confession and face the results as soon as her two
weeks' engagement was over.

Therefore tonight she kept an even tighter clasp on Grazioso's hand
than usual, her knees were shaking so absurdly. And all the faces in
the audience were swimming before her, as though they had no features
but eyes. Then suddenly the girl grew rigid with surprise, uncertainty
and fear.

In the second row just under the footlights she had discovered a face
that was strangely familiar. And yet could it be possible that this
person of all others should be here in New York City and in the theater
tonight, instead o