"Aw no; we don't leggo. It's a good stroke we both happened to spy you at the same minute. There's nothin' gives strength like a spell of the craziness. You'd 'a' jumped me alone, sure!" "No! No! It wasn't that--God, not that! Tell me, Bruce, it wasn't--that." "Of course it wasn't, Lilly." "That's what they all say once they git their senses jerked back. Come in here and pull yourself together, girl, or I'll call an ambulance or a patrol, suiting your pleasure." "Let me go, you! I won't stand it. I must have been mad! Bruce, you tell him, please--it wasn't--that!" "You're wrong, old man. Here--take this for your trouble, but this young woman is my sister. We walked out here together." Quieted suddenly to the merest timbre of insolence, the old man shambled off. "Sure!" he said, far too knowingly. "Sure!" And faded shaggily, impudently into darkness. Bruce Visigoth took Lilly home in a taxicab. At her door she broke her shamed silence. "You understand, Bruce, it wasn't anything--like that. It must have been nerves--tiredness--but nothing, Bruce, that you think it was. That old man was wrong. You must understand--for her sake--it wasn't that." "Of course it wasn't, Lilly." His voice drained off, as if from exhaustion. But for years, like a wound whose jagged lips were slow to close, the memory of this night lay palpitating between them. CHAPTER V "The Web" was tried out in Baltimore the following April, Zoe, Ida Blair, and Bruce Visigoth traveling down on the same train with the company. It cost Lilly a pang for Zoe to miss the two days of school and a vocal, a French, and a piano lesson, but the theater attracted Zoe like the blithesome little moth she was. The duties of her High School combined with the unrelenting tutelage of Treiste molded her young days pretty rigidly to form, but more than once, during the rehearsals of "The Web," Lilly, seated in the black maw of the auditorium, would turn suddenly to the feel of her daughter's gaze burning like sun through glass into the darkness. The company adopted her as a pet. The director babied her. Once, as the afternoon rehearsal was disbanding, she crept up through a box to the stage. The footlights were dark, but she came down quite freely toward them, seeming to feel their mock blaze, and sang a snatch or two from the tenderest _Lieder_ ever written, bits of Schubert and Hugo Wolf, the company gathering in the wings to listen and applaud. The incident, slight as it was, brought the scratch of tears to Lilly's eyes and the pull of half hysteria to her lips. What if, after all, an incredible fulfillment was gathering about her like a vast dawn? "O God! please!" And so, to the unending delight and amusement of Bruce, Zoe went along to Baltimore, Lilly pinching a little over the expense and pressing out ribbons and girlish accessories up to the last minute.