"Oh, _avec ça_—keep away—better keep away! You will burn your fingers. Just the kind of a little doll that is dangerous. Women like that are like half colors between one thing and the other—very dangerous! A young girl—_jeune fille_—would bore you now, and an old campaigner like Emma Fornez would amuse you; but a little thing like that is too puzzling for you. I see just how it is," she continued, placing her hands on her hips and bobbing her head energetically, while Beecher, very much pleased to be so lectured, listened with a mocking look. "Yes, yes, I know very well! She gets you—how do you say?—going and coming. When she is an actress you say she is different from the rest—what a child! And when she is playing the child, you say what a difference—she is such an artist! You laugh—see!" Beecher broke out laughing at this characterization which came so near the truth. "What I have said is very good—very good," repeated Emma Fornez, pleased. "It’s all studied, very carefully studied out, but it takes with young simpletons, big geese, good-looking boys—don’t I know? _Est-ce-que j’en ai joué de ces tours là_? Come, now, what did you fight about?" Beecher had an inclination to take her into his confidence; but he resisted the impulse, and to turn the conversation said artfully: "By Jove, you look stunning! You won’t have to sing a note." She was in a filmy peignoir, and, as his glance showed an amused admiration, she said, with a look of apology which she did not feel at all, gathering the peignoir closer with a perfectly simulated modesty: "It’s very bad—my receiving you like this. I am going through my costumes. They are dreams. Wait, you shall see—you wish to see them? Good!" All at once she stopped and, seizing his arm, cried: "Teddy, I am in a cold fright—I shiver all over whenever I think of it. New York audiences are terrible. It will be a big, big failure, won’t it?" "There, I’ll give you my lucky piece," he said, patting her shoulder as he would a child’s. "Will you!" she cried, delighted; and; running into the bedroom, she called back: "I will show you the costume for the second act first. You will fall down and adore me. Keep me talking, Teddy—I shall go into hysterics. Oh, I am so frightened!" She tried her voice, singing a scale, inquiring anxiously, her head peering around the door: "That sounds bad, _hein_?" "Marvelous!" said Beecher, who did not know one note from another. Reassured, she entered radiantly, took two or three steps forward, and, lifting the castanets on her fingers, flung herself into the pose of Carmen exulting in the return of her lover. "Carmen, Teddy," she cried, with a toss of her head. "Carmen is different from all other rôles. To succeed in Carmen, one must be a Carmen one’s self—_enfant de la Bohême_. You like this? Wait—wait a moment."