see whether I can--can do it?"
pleaded Mildred.

Crossley, made the more eager and the more superstitious by this
unprecedented reluctance, shook his head.

"No. You must agree to stay as long as we want you," said he. "We
can't allow ourselves to be trifled with."

"Very well," said Mildred resignedly. "I will rehearse as long as you
want me."

"And will stay for the run of the piece, if we want that?" said
Crossley. "You to get a hundred a week if you are put in the cast.
More, of course, if you make a hit."

"You mean I'm to sign a contract?" cried Mildred in dismay.

"Exactly," said Crossley. A truly amazing performance. Moldini was
not astonished, however, for he had heard the songs, and he knew
Crossley's difficulties through Estelle Howard's flight. Also, he knew
Crossley--never so "weak and soft" that he trifled with unlikely
candidates for his productions. Crossley had got up because he knew
what to do and when to do it.

Mildred acquiesced. Before she was free to go into the street again,
she had signed a paper that bound her to rehearse for three weeks at
fifty dollars a week and to stay on at a hundred dollars a week for
forty weeks or the run of "The Full Moon," if Crossley so desired; if
he did not, she was free at the end of the rehearsals. A shrewdly
one-sided contract. But Crossley told himself he would correct it, if
she should by some remote chance be good enough for the part and should
make a hit in it. This was no mere salve to conscience, by the way.
Crossley would not be foolish enough to give a successful star just
cause for disliking and distrusting him and at the earliest opportunity
leaving him to make money for some rival manager.

Mrs. Belloc had not gone out, had been waiting in a fever of anxiety.
When Mildred came into her sitting-room with a gloomy face and dropped
to a chair as if her last hope had abandoned her, it was all Agnes
Belloc could do to restrain her tears. Said she:

"Don't be foolish, my dear. You couldn't expect anything to come of
your first attempt."

"That isn't it," said Mildred. "I think I'll give it up--do something
else. Grand opera's bad enough. There were a lot of things about it
that I was fighting my distaste for."

"I know," said Agnes. "And you'd better fight them hard. They're
unworthy of you."

"But--musical comedy! It's--frightful!"

"It's an honest way of making a living, and that's more than can be
said of--of some thin