"I suppose now you are sorry you didn't stay at home in your canary cage to no one's particular advantage and your own terrific disadvantage. Now that you have reared me into the kind of human being you set out to be, you renig. Do you want to throw me back into that bowl with the greased sides that you managed to climb out of? Not much." This from Zoe, mixed metaphor and all, who at seventeen kept _Doll's House_, Freud, _Anna Karenina_, and Ellen Key on the table beside her bed. "Theories go down, Zoe, before life--and death." She sat haughtily young, and without tolerance, her profile averted and trying to keep the quiver off her lips. "Just when I'm ready to graduate and preparing for my audition--to have this--" "Zoe--Zoe--don't make it harder--" "I'm a dog, Lilly--forgive me." "The entire abominable condition is my fault--" "Then thank God for the abominable condition. I love you and everything you've done." "Then be sweet to them for my sake. Your grandmother, she's going to be unlike anyone you have ever known. She's a great one to pick up the bread crumbs of life with a great ado. That's been her existence, dear--little things. And your grandfather, Zoe, he's so gentle. Somehow I imagine he is even gentler now. You remember I used to tell you how we'd play at hide and seek long after I was grown. Oh, Zoe, be sweet!" "I will, dear." "And--your father. Whatever his attitude may be, remember the fault lies in me--not him." "Trust me, Lilly, if only he doesn't drop dead when he sees me!" "Zoe!" Between them the little drama was carefully rehearsed. "Visi would pay big money for this act." "You'll be your own natural sweet self, Zoe? No posing?" "Don't worry. I suppose if the truth is known I'll have an aggravated case of stage fright." "They'll know--everything, Zoe, before I let them see you. Just be simple, dear--and please--no dramatics!" "It's all too dramatic for dramatics," she replied, cryptically. It was finally decided that Lilly was to meet the train alone, settle the trio at the Hotel Astor, and arrive at the apartment in time for a dinner prepared by a cook and waitress especially brought in for the day. "Break the news in a public place, Lilly--the hotel lobby or a taxi---and avoid family fireworks." "My news can't be broken." "Why?" "Smashed, rather." At four o'clock the morning of the arrival, Lilly was up, moving with the aimlessness of great nervousness about the apartment. At that same hour Mrs. Becker was emerging backward from her sleeper, kimono-clad, and bulging through the curtains into the dark aisle. "Carrie," her husband whispered after her, jutting his head out with a turtle's dart, "it's only three o'clock, Eastern time. Why are you getting up?" "Because I want to," she said, plowing on. Once in the dressing room, she fell to crying as she staggered and dressed, apparently because each object, as she took it up, fell from her fingers.