As the hours passed and sleep did not come she began to wonder if it were not all a dream. The idea took hold of her. Of course, Maggy had not gone.... She sat up and spoke her name across the darkness. "Maggy!" Although there was no answer, the tantalizing obsession was still upon her. She got out of bed and crossed over to Maggy’s, feeling above the coverlet for the comforting touch of the warm, sleepy body. The coverlet was flat, the sheets cool. Maggy had gone. She groped her way back to her own bed, and at last tears came, and with tears, sleep. By the morning, the sharp edge of her feelings was somewhat blunted. She was still sorry, but not passionately sorry. Those who have wept for their dead with the poignancy of first grief experience much the same dulling of the emotions. It precedes the inevitable resignation, without which they could not again take up the lonely burden of life. Maggy was lost to her, as lost to her as if she had died. She had not the consolation of knowing that she would see her again, alive, exuberantly happy, unregretting, and that this feeling would pass. She did not know then that across the barrier of her frailty Maggy would hold out her strong, young, eager hands, and that she, Alexandra, would grasp them in unalterable love and friendship. She put away the money Maggy had wanted her to take until she could give it back to her, and directly she had had her breakfast, started for the theatrical agents’ offices. They opened at ten. She had small hope of obtaining anything at any of them. The principals did not know her by sight. When one of them made an occasional dart into the waiting room and gave a quick glance round she was only "one of a crowd." At such times there would be a little stir and scrimmage amongst the men and women in which she would not share. Men would elbow women, women elbow men in their efforts to catch the agent’s eye or better still his sleeve. And he would shake them off in a precipitate passage from his own room to that of his partner’s at the other end of the waiting room. Alexandra knew his short, little, staccato, stock sentences by heart. "Nothing for you to-day, dear." (Shake her off.) "Sorry, my dear, I can’t stop." (Shake her off.) "No, my dear, I—oh, it’s you. Stop behind. I’ll see you later." (Pressure of the hand.) "Nothing in your line to-day, old fellow." (Shake him off.) Perhaps a fleeting look at Alexandra, so that she was in doubt as to whether she had been noticed or not.