oves to parasols; and in the room beyond this, and beyond that, and
again beyond that, row after row of high wooden cabinets stretching the
width of the room, and forming innumerable aisles. All of Bluebeard's
wives could have been tucked away in one corner of the remotest and
least of these, and no one the wiser. All grimly shut and locked, they
are, with the key in Josie's pocket. But when, at the behest of McCabe,
or sometimes even Sid Hahn himself, she unlocked and opened one of
these doors, what treasures hung revealed! What shimmer and sparkle and
perfume--and moth balls! The long-tailed electric light bulb held high
in one hand, Josie would stand at the door like a priestess before her
altar.

There they swung, the ghosts and the skeletons, side by side. You
remember that slinking black satin snakelike sheath that Gita Morini
wore in "Little Eyolf"? There it dangles, limp, invertebrate, yet how
eloquent! No other woman in the world could have worn that gown, with
its unbroken line from throat to hem, its smooth, high, black satin
collar, its writhing tail that went slip-slip-slipping after her. In it
she had looked like a sleek and wicked python that had fasted for a
long, long time.

Dresses there are that have made stage history. Surely you remember the
beruffled, rose-strewn confection in which the beautiful Elsa Marriott
swam into our ken in "Mississipp'"? She used to say, wistfully, that she
always got a hand on her entrance in that dress. It was due to the sheer
shock of delight that thrilled audience after audience as it beheld her
loveliness enhanced by this floating, diaphanous tulle cloud. There it
hangs, time-yellowed, its pristine freshness vanished quite, yet as
fragrant with romance as is the sere and withered blossom of a dead
white rose pressed within the leaves of a book of love poems. Just next
it, incongruously enough, flaunt the wicked froufrou skirts and the
low-cut bodice and the wasp waist of the abbreviated costume in which
Cora Kassell used so generously to display her charms. A rich and portly
society matron of Pittsburgh now--she whose name had been a synonym for
pulchritude these thirty years; she who had had more cold creams, hats,
cigars, corsets, horses, and lotions named for her than any woman in
history! Her ample girth would have wrought sad havoc with that
eighteen-inch waist now. Gone are the chaste curves of the slim white
silk legs that used to kick so lithely from the swirl