“No; I’m supposed to be still in this white frock, locked up in the power of the border desperadoes.” “And I, praise Heaven, am through!” Kitty did sound profoundly grateful for the fact. Barrison thought she looked very tired and that her eyes were rather unhappy. She had played her part brilliantly and gayly, appearing, as usual, a fresh and adorable young girl. Now, seen at close range, she looked both weary and dispirited under the powder and grease paint. “I’m awfully fagged!” she confessed. “And my head is splitting. I think I’ll just sneak home.” “Oh, but Mr. Dukane will be wild!” exclaimed Sybil in protest. “Isn’t it a fad of his always to have the principals wait for the curtain calls, no matter when they’ve finished?” “Oh, stuff! We’re through with the regulation business, all of us bowing prettily after the third act, and Jack Carlton trying to make a speech that isn’t unintelligible with slang! That’s enough and to spare for one night. And I really feel wretched. Like the Snark, I shall slowly and silently vanish away! I call upon you, good people, to cover my exit.” She slipped into her dressing room, and a moment later the dresser, Parry, whose services were shared by her and Sybil, came out. She was a fat, pasty woman whose long life spent in the wardrobe rooms and dressing rooms of theaters seemed to have made her pallid with a cellarlike pallor. She disappeared around the corner that led to the stage door, and in a minute or so returned. As she opened Kitty’s door and entered, Barrison heard her say: “All right, Miss Legaye; Roberts is sending for a taxi.” Of the dressing rooms Kitty’s was the farthest back, Sybil’s next, and Mortimer’s—the star room—so far down as to be adjoining the property room, which was close to what is professionally known as “the first entrance.” There Willie Coster and his assistant ruled, supreme gods, over the electric switchboard. The passage to the stage door ran at right angles to the row of dressing rooms, so that any one coming in or out at the former would not be visible to any one standing near one of the rooms, unless he or she turned the corner made by the star dressing room. This particular point—the turning near Mortimer’s door—was further masked by the iron skeleton staircase which started near Sybil’s room and ran upward in a sharp slant to the second tier of dressing rooms where the small fry of the company and the extras dressed.