She tried to retreat, but the rude eyes and words followed her. Occasionally the voice of the prompter was heard: 'Now then, ladies, silence if you please; I can't hear what's being said on the stage.' No one listened to him, and, like animals in a fair, they continued to crush and to crowd in the passage between the wings and the whitewashed wall. A tall, fat girl stood close by; her hand was on her sword, which she slapped slowly against her thighs. The odour of hair, cheap scent, necks, bosoms and arms was overpowering, and to Kate's sense of modesty there was something revolting in this loud display of body. A bugle call was soon sounded in the orchestra, and this was the signal for much noise and bustle. The conspirators rushed off the stage, threw aside their cloaks, and immediately after the soft curling strains of the waltz were heard; then the bugle was sounded again, and the girls began to tramp. 'Cue for soldiers' entrance,' shouted the prompter. 'Now then, ladies, are you ready?' cried Dick, as he put himself at the head of the army. 'Yes,' was murmured all along the line, and seeing her hero marching away at the head of so many women, any one of whom he could have had for the asking, it crossed her mind that it was unnatural for him to stoop to her, a poor little dressmaker of Hanley, who did not know anything except, perhaps, how to stitch the seams of a skirt. But after what had befallen her last night, it did not seem possible that her fate was to be left behind, stitching beside Hender and the two little girls, Annie and Lizzie; stitching bodice after bodice, skirt after skirt, till the end of her days, remembering always something that had come into her life suddenly and had gone out of it suddenly. 'It cannot be,' she cried out to herself--'it cannot be!' And she remembered that he had said that her ear was true, and her voice as pure as Leslie's. 'A little throaty,' he had said, 'but that can be improved.' What he meant by throaty she did not know, but no matter; and to convince herself that he had spoken truly she sang the refrain of the waltz till the gas-man pulled a rope and brought the curtain down. She was about to rush on the stage to speak to Dick, but the gas-man stopped her. 'You must wait a moment, there's a call,' he said. Up went the curtain; the house burst into loud applause. Down went the curtain; up it went again. This time only the principals came on, and while they were bowing and smiling to the audience a great herd of females poured through the wings, and Kate found herself again among courtesans, conspirators, seducers, and wandering minstrels. 'Who is she?' they asked as they went by. And Kate heard somebody answer, 'A spoon of Dick's,' and unable to endure the coarse jeering faces, which the strange costumes seemed to accentuate, she took advantage of a sudden break in the ranks and ran through the wings towards the back of the stage. 'What's the matter, dear?' he said, drawing her to him.