Miss Birdsong brushed at her soft cheeks with the pink tip of a rabbit's foot, and the color sprang out to match the rose-colored sateen facing of her hat. Her lips opened in a faint smile; and after a careful interval she scrambled into her jacket, flung a good-night kiss to the doorman, and hurried through the gloomy foyer. No sham like the sham of the theater! Its marble facade is classic as a temple, and its dirty gray-brick rear opens out on a cat-infested alley. The perfumes of the auditorium are the fumes of the wings. Thespis wears a custom-made coat of many colors, but his undershirt is sackcloth. Miss Birdsong stepped out of a gold and mauve hallway, through a grimy side-door, and into an area as black as a pit; and out from its blackest shadows a figure rose to meet her. "Joe?" "Yeh; where's Loo and Harry?" "I dunno; they--they went on." "Hurry up, Beauty. I ain't so much of a favorite round this theater that I can bask in this sunny spot." "I didn't mean to keep you waitin' so long, Joe." "Believe me, you're the foist little girl I ever hung round an usher's exit for." "Honest, am I, Joe?" "Surest thing! The stage-door is my pace, and for nothing short of head-liners, neither. I gotta like a girl pretty well to hang round on the wrong side of the footlights for her, sweetness." "Joe, I--I wish I knew if you was kiddin'." "Kiddin' nothin'!" They emerged into the white shower from a score of arc-lights; and Mr. Joe Ullman, an apotheosis of a classy-clothes tailor's dearest dream, in his brown suit, brown-bordered silk handkerchief nicely apparent, brown derby hat and tan-top shoes, turned his bulldog toes and fox-terrier eyes to the north, where against a fulvous sky the Palais du Danse spelled itself in ruby and emerald incandescents with the carefully planned effect of green moonlight floating in a mist of blood. "Joe"--she dragged gently at his coat-sleeve, and a warm pink spread out from under the area of rouge--"Joe, you know what you promised for to-night?" "What, kiddo? The sky's my limit. I'll taxi you till the meter gives out. I'll buy you--" "You have promised so long, Joe. Come on! Let's go up home to-night. Be a sport, and let's go. Ma's got a midnight supper waitin', and--" "The doctor says home cookin's bad for me, sweetness." He cocked his hat slightly askew, stroked a chin as blue as a priest's, and winked down at her. "Honest, sweetness, I'm going to buy you a phonograph record of 'Home Sweet Home Ain't Sweet Enough for Me'--" "She's waitin' up for us, Joe; she ain't hardly able to be up, but she's waitin', Joe." "Ain't I told you I'm going up with you some night when I'm in the humor for it? I feel like a ninety-horse-power dancer to-night, Doll. Whatta you bet I sold more seats for your show to-night than the box-office? Whatta you bet?" "Joe--you promised."