Actresses -- Fiction; Americans -- England -- Fiction; Love stories; Mate selection -- Fiction
The man, without moving, picked up a small red cap with a single plume,
from the sofa at his side. In another second Letty Lane had placed it on
her head of yellow hair, real yellow hair and not a doubt of it, like
sunshine—not the color one gets from inside bottles. Her arms, her hands
flashed with rings, priceless flashes, and the little spears pricked Dan
like sharp needles.
“It’s the nicest ever!” she was saying. “How on earth did you get in
here, though? Have you bought the Gaiety Theater? I’m the most exclusive
girl on the stage. Who let you in?”
Her accent was English, and even that put her from him. As he looked at
her he couldn’t understand how he had ever recognized her. If he had
waited for another act he wouldn’t have believed the likeness real. The
girl he remembered had both softened and hardened; the round features
were gone, but all the angles were gone as well. Her eyes were as gray
as the seas; she was painted and her lids were darkened. Seen close, she
was not so divine as on the stage, but there was still a more thrilling
charm about the fact that she was real.
“To think of any one from Montana being here to-night! Staying very
long, Mr. Blair?” Between each sentence she directed Higgins, who was
getting her into her bodice. “And how do you like _Mandalay_? Isn’t it
great?”
She addressed herself to Dan, but she smiled on both the men with
extreme brilliance.
“You bet your life,” he responded. “I should think it was great.”
Poniotowsky rose indolently. He had not looked toward the new-comer, but
had, on the other hand, followed every detail of Miss Lane’s dressing.
“Better take your scarf, Letty. Hand it to Miss Lane,” he directed
Higgins. “It is so damned drafty in these beastly wings.”
He drew his watch out, gathered up his long coat, flung it over his arm
and picked up his opera hat which lay folded on Letty Lane’s
dressing-table.
The call page for the third time summoned “Miss La—ne, Miss La—ane,” and
she took the scarf Higgins handed her and ran it through her hands,
still beaming on Dan.
“Come in to see me at the Savoy on any day at two-thirty except on
matinée days.”
“Put on your scarf.” Poniotowsky, taking it from her hands, laid it
across her white shoulders, and she passed out between the two men,
light as a bird, smiling, nodding, followed by the prince and the boy
from Montana. The crowds began to fill the lately empty wings—dancers,
chorus girls with their rustling gowns. Letty Lane said to Dan:
“Guess you’ll like my solo in this act all right—it’s the best thing in
_Mandalay_. Now go along, and clap me hard.”
It gave him a new pleasure, for she had spoken to him in real American
fashion with the swift mimicry that showed her talent. Dan went slowly
back to his party. As he took his seat by the duchess she said to him:
“You went out to see Letty Lane. Do you know her?”
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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