"No, I can't come in," she replied to her friend's entreaty to enter. "I want just one little peep at the audience, while I eat my supper. I must feel particularly inspired in this last dreadful moment. And the house is grand," she exclaimed, triumphantly. "'Delightful to the ravished sense,'" she hummed, enveloping herself gleefully in the folds of a sheltering portière. "What a relief, after all these weeks! Sister has just come from the front, where they are actually speculating on the tickets. It sounds too good to be true. I hear the distant strains of the new organ!" she cried, dramatically. "If only we can postpone the murder of the calcium light man by our bloodthirsty Professor Tiptoe success is ours!" She flew gaily from the box to attend to the last few arrangements that prefaced the overture. Pasadena's handsome opera house had been, possibly, the supremest blessing of the great boom. At the time it was built, few doubted the absolute necessity of a rival city for the south of the State. Fortunately for beautiful Pasadena, the men with visions were ruthlessly awakened to find Los Angeles still the acknowledged commercial center of the valley. In the meantime, her aristocratic suburb had an opera house and a number of other delightful conveniences that might have been delayed in the absence of a boom. The audience assembled upon the night of the pageant indicated assured prosperity. The sight was an opulent surprise for the uninstructed stranger. Not a vacant seat was visible. The upper galleries were crowded to the wall; many were standing in the aisles. From our box we rejoiced for Ethel in the finished brilliancy of the scene. "Every one in the set is here but the Prince of Wales," Mrs. Sanderson remarked, jestingly, as she surveyed with honest astonishment the elaborate equipments of the evening. Extending completely around the balcony, across the proscenium, and encircling both upper and lower boxes, bloomed a variegated band of exquisite roses, four feet in width. Here and there the luxurious band turned from a knot of glorious Duchesse into a stretch of Maréchal Neil, which farther on caught hold of the vivid Henrietta. Touching close the pure French rose-color, the simple, unaffected La Marque lay like a field of snow between voluptuous meadows--for next beyond, almost throbbing, scintillating with every change of the lights, shone the Gold of Ophir. In its distinctive beauty, it seemed to steal from the wonderful galaxy of bloom the composite glory of all. Last in the wonderful band, the Jacqueminot imparted its dark beauty, also its rich odor of high-born culture that lingers in the petals long after their color has fled. Although the general scheme of the pageant had been a secret, it was soon understood that the roses used in the decoration of the auditorium were sympathetic representatives of those personified upon the stage.