A pretty little theatre: softly lighted, well and quietly filled. Quietly toned, too, the dresses of the women in the boxes,--of that neutral, subdued caste that showed they belonged to the grade above fashion. People of rank tastes did not often go there. The little Kentuckian, with her emphatic, sham-hating face, and Grey, whose simple, calm outlook on the world made her last year's bonnet and cloak dwindle into such irrelevant trifles, did not misbecome the place. Others might go there to fever out _ennui_, or with fouler fancies. Grey did not know. The play was a simple little thing; its meaning was pure as a child's song; there was a good deal of fun in it. Grey laughed with everybody else; she would ask God to bless her to-night none the worse for that. It had some touches of pathos in it, and she cried, and saw some men about her with the smug New-York-city face doing the very same,--not just as she did, but glowering at the footlights, and softly blowing their noses. Then the music came, and _La petite Elise_. Grey drew back where she could not see her. Blecker peered through his glass at every line and motion, as she came out from the eternal castle in the back scene. Any gnawing power or gift she had had found vent, certainly, now. Every poise and inflection said, "Here I am what I am,--fully what God made me, at last: no more, no less." God had made her an actress. Why, He knows. The Great Spirit of Love says to the toad in your gutter,--"Thou, too, art my servant, in whom, fulfilling the work I give, I am well pleased." _La petite Elise_ had only a narrow and peculiar scope of power, suited to vaudevilles: she could not represent her own character,--an actress's talent and heart being as widely separated, in general, as yours are. She could bring upon the stage in her body the presentment of a _naive_, innocent, pathetic nature, and use the influence such nature might have on the people outside the orchestra-chairs there. It was not her own nature, we know. She dressed and looked it. A timid little thing, in her fluttering white slip, her light hair cut close to her head, in short curls. So much for the actress and her power. She sang at last. She sang ballads generally, (her voice wanting cultivation,) such as agreed with her _role_. But it was Lizzy Gurney who sang, not _la petite Elise_. "Of course," a society-mother said to me, one day, "I do _not_ wish my Rosa should have a great sorrow, but--how it would develop her voice!" The bonnet-worshipper stumbled on a great truth.