“Evening dress stuff, they say, which means the girls will and the men won’t.” She threw her cigarette stub at the wastebasket, and after a few waverings which Félicie watched tensely, it went in. “Well—we’ve got to go along. We’ll be around for you to-night, some time. Be ready!” “Good-bye, Miss Durant,” said Joy, taking a last comprehensive look at the massed loveliness before her. She half wished that she were going that night. To see it drawn up in battle array! “We must have a movie date some time,” Félicie smiled, but her smile was changed to a shriek as she followed them down the hall. “You didn’t close the door, and he got out! Oh, _Fizz_!” She captured him in the lower entry and held him carefully away from the lace of her dress, his red tongue dangling, his little eyes peering pinkly from beneath his drying bangs, as she again speeded them on their way. “Well, what did you think of the human jellyfish?” Jerry asked, as they made for their regular “taxi,” a Subway prepayment car. “Jerry—I think she’s the loveliest thing I’ve ever seen. But I don’t in the least get why she’s like a jellyfish.” “Listen. If you’ve ever seen the animal, you know it’s flabby and yet you can’t pull it apart. That’s what she is.” “I don’t know. Her arguments were pretty good; they’ve started me thinking.” “Well, all I’ve got to say is this: I never saw anyone fill the flowing bowl—and drink it and have it left. And I don’t think she can pull it off any more than anyone else.” Joy was a little more weary of work than she cared to admit, and found a welcome diversion in watching Jerry and Sarah prepare for the evening. Even the familiar spectacle of Sarah whitewashing her neck, back, shoulders and arms with liquid powder, was amusing. When they left, wrapping about themselves with conscious sumptuousness new evening cloaks that Jerry had recently evolved, she could not circumvent a sigh. After all—she was going from one extreme to the other. She went to the piano and started playing the score of Faust, as Pa was now working her through the rôle of Marguerite. “Old fashioned, but it will teach you much,” he had said. It was all within her increased powers of vocalisation except the trill in the Jewel Song. When she sang and played exultantly through the score, she felt lifted to a zenith of mauve heights which trembled in ecstasy of tone—until her next lesson. She played now, supporting an even lusciousness of tone— “Je voudrais bien savoir quel était ce jeune homme Si c’est un grand’seigneur, et comment il se nomme.” The piano under her hands transmuted itself into a great orchestra; the walls of the room widened to the huge stage of the Metropolitan; and she, Marguerite, was standing with clasped hands savouring the wonder of love at first sight. She was glad that she was more slender than most of the vocalists who could essay the rôle; and no wig would be needed to cover her own golden hair.