She was staring in amazement at the sheeted auditorium into which the unexpected rake of the stage seemed threatening to precipitate her. Vague masses hung over her head in the half-light seeming about to fall and crush her in the grisly loneliness to which she was abandoned as Mr. Darley went round to the orchestra. The diminished echoes of his footfalls were a wan assurance that this place, shunned by daylight as if it were a tomb, had contacts with humanity. But he had said it was the stage and however disconcerting she might find its obscure menace, the stage was where she wished to be and she was not to be put down either by it or by a little man who was rude about her best clothes, while he had not shaved that morning and his knickerbockers showed a rent verging on the scandalous. She had to sing to him and she expelled her terrors of her strange, her so alarmingly dreary surroundings, and strained her eyes to read the music he had put into her hands. He seemed to bob up below her like a jack-in-the-box, and struck some chords on the piano. “Have you got that one?” he asked. “Yes.” she said, fighting her impulse to scream at the phenomenon of his sudden reappearance. “Then let her go.” She sang the opening chorus of “The Little Viennese.” “You’ve sung that before,” he said, accusingly. “Oh, no.” “Don’t try to kid me. It won’t pay. Read through the one you’ve got there marked 3.” No. 3 was a new interpolation; she might know the rest, but she couldn’t know No. 3. “Ready? Go on,” and, in a minute, surprised, satisfied but by no means inclined to show his satisfaction other than by cutting the trial short, “That’ll do, that’ll do,” he said resentfully. “This isn’t the Albert Hall. What about your dancing?” “I’m afraid I haven’t danced yet,” said Mary. “You will,” he said savagely, “and to my piping. I knew there was a catch in it somewhere,” he thought, “but it comes to me that I’ve found a hobby for the rest of this tour. They don’t often send me stuff that’s worth working on.--I suppose you took the name of Arden because you’ve got a wooden leg,” he jeered aloud. Mary Ellen’s face clouded, then an accomplishment of her street days came back to her. They were not, after all, so long ago. She pitched her hat into the wings and, reckless of the rake of the stage, turned rapid cartwheels. “It’s that sort of wood,” she said, breathless but defiant.