“That was some life—practice early in the A.M., get to Charlette’s at nine, work all day, Hanley’s in the evening, Pa Graham Sundays. That man has got a soul in him for every art in music, and he showed me how to succeed in my line while he was trying to make me into a diseuse. He made me go and hear Yvette Guilbert, and told me that’s what I should aim for—to be the American Yvette. But I had my own little idea of what I wanted to do, and to try diseusing in war times wasn’t it. “And all this time I steered clear of men. It wasn’t so easy now that I was at Hanley’s, but being at work most of the time helped me, that and the thought of Phil Lancaster—it was funny the way he and the things he said stuck in my mind. ‘Honour and truth and a sure intent’—I had all of that now, the way I looked at it. You remember war times, Joy—everybody wanting to do something for somebody—air just reeking with idealism—all I wanted was to get over there and be some good. And after the war, Phil Lancaster, if he was still alive. Things would be different after the war, I thought. And I figured it that the experience of being over there would purify me as you read of its purifying people’s souls. For by that time I saw what the first years of my life had done to me. I don’t blame myself yet for being born an alley cat and living with and in scum for the first fifteen years of my life. I wasn’t taught any differently, and in spite of everything I taught myself and pulled myself out of the scum. No, I didn’t blame myself—I only wanted to better myself—and I thought that this Y stuff, overseas, would do a lot towards wiping away the scum that seeps in under the skin, when you’re buried in it, and sticks afterwards when you wash off the outside part. “It was in October of 1917 that the top of everything was knocked off for me. I was at Hanley’s singing some fool song about ‘My Little Service Flag Having Seven Stars,’ and it was about eleven-fifteen—when suddenly I saw him—Phil Lancaster. Sitting alone at a table by the wall. He was looking at me, _he was looking at me_! He was in the uniform of a Captain of Infantry, and if I hadn’t been remembering him every day ever since he had come into Charlette’s, I wouldn’t have known him, he was so changed and tired. But he was looking at me! I faded up and closed out—all my wind gone. Shut down on encores. Couldn’t pipe another note. He had looked at me—well, as if he was noticing me hot.