It is not my custom to visit artists in the theatre before a performance, unless there has been some complaint, some annoyance, some trouble of some sort, something to straighten out. However, on this opening night in Chicago, I happened to be back stage in the Opera House on some errand. Since I was so close, I felt I wanted to wish the artists good-luck for their first Chicago performance, and, passing, knocked at Margot’s dressing-room door. No reply. I waited. I knocked again. No answer. Puzzled, I walked away to return ten minutes later. I knocked again. Again no answer. Worried, I opened the door. “Don’t you hear me, Margot?” I asked. Without glancing up, there came two words, no more. Two words, bitten off, crisp and sharp: “G-e-t O--u--t!” It was utterly unlike her. What had happened? I could not imagine. We had dined together the night before, together with “Freddy” Ashton, “Bobby” Helpmann and Moira Shearer. It had been a gay dinner, jolly. Margot had been her witty, amusing self. She had, I knew, been eagerly awaiting a letter from Paris, a letter from a particular friend. Perhaps it had not come. Perhaps it had. Whatever it was, I reasoned, at least it was not my fault. I was not to blame. We met after the performance at the party. I was puzzled. “Are you angry at me?” I asked her. “I?” She smiled an uncomprehending smile. “Why on earth should I be angry at you?” “You didn’t answer when I knocked at your door several times, and then, when I spoke, you told me, in no uncertain fashion, to get out.” “Don’t you know that, before a performance, I won’t talk to anyone?” she said sternly. Then she kissed me. “Don’t take me too seriously,” she smiled, patting me on the shoulder, “but, remember, I don’t want to see _anyone_ before I go on.” _MARGOT FONTEYN_ In Margot Fonteyn we have, in my opinion, the greatest _ballerina_ of the western world, the greatest _ballerina_ of the world of ballet as we know it. Born Margaret Hookham, in Surrey, in 1919, the daughter of an English businessman father and a dark-skinned, dark-haired mother of Irish and Brazilian ancestry, who is sometimes known as the Black Queen in the company, a reference to one of the leading characters in _Checkmate_. Margot was taken to China as a small child, where the family home was in Shanghai. There was also an interim period when she was a pupil in a school in such a characteristically American city as Louisville, Kentucky. Margot tells a story to the effect that she was taken as a child to see a performance by Pavlova, and that she was not particularly impressed. It would be much better “copy,” infinitely better for publicity purposes, to have her say that visit changed the whole course of her life and that, from that moment, she determined not only to be a dancer, but to become Pavlova’s successor. But Margot Fonteyn is an honest person.