When Letty Lane appeared Blair heard a light rustle like rain through the auditorium, a murmur, and the house rose. There was a well-bred calling from the stalls, a call from the pit, and a generous applause—“Letty Lane—Letty Lane!” and as though she were royalty, there was a fluttering of handkerchiefs like flags. The young fellow with the others stood in the back of the box, his hands in his pockets, looking at the stage. There wasn’t a girl in the chorus as pretty as this prima donna! Letty Lane came on in _Mandalay_ in the first act in the dress of a fashionable princess. She was modish and worldly. For the only time in the play she was modern and conventional, and whatever breeding she might have been able to claim, from whatever class she was born, as she stood there in her beautiful gown she was grace itself, and charm. She was distinctly a star, and showed her appreciation of her audience’s admiration. At the end of the tenor solo the Princess Oltary runs into the pavilion and there changes her dress and appears once more to dance before the rajah and to prove herself the dancer he has known and loved in a café in Paris. Letty Lane’s dress in this dance was the classic ballet dancer’s, white as the leaves of a lily. She seemed to swim and float; actually to be breathed and exhaled from out her filmy gown; and the only ray of color in her costume was her own golden hair, surmounted by a small coral-colored cap, embroidered in pearls. The actress bowed to the right and left, ran to the right, ran to the left; glanced toward the Duchess of Breakwater’s box; acknowledged the burst of applause; began to dance and finished her _pas seul_, and with folded hands sang her song. Her beautiful voice came out clear as crystal water from a crystal rock, and her words were cradled like doves, like boats on the boundless seas.... “From India’s coral strand....” But there was no hymn tune to this song of Letty Lane’s in _Mandalay_! To the boy in the box, however, the words, the tune, the droning of the flies on the window-pane, the strong odor of the hymn-books and panama fans, came back, and the clear sunlight of Montana seemed to steal into the Gaiety as Letty Lane sang. The Duchess of Breakwater clapped with frank enthusiasm, and said: “She is a perfect wonder, isn’t she? Oh, she is _too_ bewitching!” And she turned for sympathy to her friend, who stood behind her, his face illumined. He was amazed; his blue eyes ablaze, his head bent forward, he was staring, staring at the Gaiety curtain, gone down on the first act. He laughed softly, and the duchess heard him say: “_Good!_ Well, I should say she was! She’s a girl from our town!” When the duchess tried to share her enthusiasm with Dan he had disappeared. He left the box and with no difficulty made his way as far as the first wing. “Can you get me an entrance?” he asked a man he had met once at Osdene and who was evidently an habitué. “I dare say. Rippin’ show, isn’t it?” [Image]