tter of fact the Primadonna needed neither sympathy nor
support, and that sort of admiration was not of the kind that most
delighted her. She did not believe that she had done anything heroic,
and did not feel at all inclined to cry.

'You saved the whole audience!' cried Signor Pompeo Stromboli, the
great Italian tenor, who presented an amazing appearance in his
Highland dress. 'Four thousand seven hundred and fifty-three people
owe you their lives at this moment! Every one of them would have been
dead but for your superb coolness! Ah, you are indeed a great woman!'

Schreiermeyer's business ear had caught the figures. As they walked,
each with an arm through one of the Primadonna's, he leaned back and
spoke to Stromboli behind her head.

'How the devil do you know what the house was?' he asked sharply.

'I always know,' answered the Italian in a perfectly matter-of-fact
tone. 'My dresser finds out from the box-office. I never take the C
sharp if there are less than three thousand.'

'I'll stop that!' growled Schreiermeyer.

'As you please!' Stromboli shrugged his massive shoulders. 'C sharp is
not in the engagement!'

'It shall be in the next! I won't sign without it!'

'I won't sign at all!' retorted the tenor with a sneer of superiority.
'You need not talk of conditions, for I shall not come to America
again!'

'Oh, do stop quarrelling!' laughed Cordova as they reached the door of
her box, for she had heard similar amenities exchanged twenty times
already, and she knew that they meant nothing at all on either side.

'Have you any beer?' inquired Stromboli of the Primadonna, as if
nothing had happened.

'Bring some beer, Bob!' Schreiermeyer called out over his shoulder to
some one in the distance.

'Yes, sir,' answered a rough voice, far off, and with a foreign
accent.

The three entered the Primadonna's dressing-room together. It was a
hideous place, as all dressing-rooms are which are never used two days
in succession by the same actress or singer; very different from
the pretty cells in the beehive of the Comedie Francaise where each
pensioner or shareholder is lodged like a queen bee by herself, for
years at a time.

The walls of Cordova's dressing-room were more or less white-washed
where the plaster had not been damaged. There was a dingy full-length
mirror, a shabby toilet-table; there were a few crazy chairs, the
wretched furniture which is generally to be found in actresses'
dressing-rooms