Ivy might have been persuaded to relent, but Myra withdrew into a shell of cold reserve which made Ralph think of the days when he had first known her at Dumfries. She looked on with chilling surprise and disapproval while Evereld chatted in a friendly fashion with Ivy, and quite refused to join in the general conversation. While all the rest were pinning each other’s draperies she stood by the fireplace busily occupied with her powder-puff, apparently quite self-engrossed, but in reality noting with jealous pangs the easy good fellowship of her fellow artists and the expression of Ralph’s face as he talked with Evereld and Ivy. She made up her mind to hold entirely aloof and show how she despised them all, and it proved quite impossible to make any way with her. Evereld made one last effort in the interval after the third act when Myra, looking extremely handsome in her lawyer’s cap and gown came into the green room ready for the Trial scene, and Ivy, in good spirits after receiving much applause for her sprightly rendering of Jessica’s part, was quite disposed to break the silence which had now lasted so long between them. But as it takes two to make a quarrel it also takes two to make an atonement, and Mrs. Brinton calmly turned her back upon the girl and sailed across the room to the inevitable powder-box. “I don’t care,” said Ivy under her breath as she shrugged her shoulders and left the room. “If it pleases her to go about with a black dog on her back, let her! Now you are going to stand at the wings, Evereld, and enjoy the Trial scene; you will have a capital view of it just from here. As for me, I shall run up and change for my moonlight scene. _Au revoir!_” She felt in a mischievous mood, resenting Myra’s absurd behaviour, and yet too much pleased by her good reception and by the satisfaction of being on comfortable terms with Ralph and Evereld again to be exactly angry. “I will dress quickly and run down before Myra comes up for her next change,” she reflected. “It is just hateful sharing a dressing-room with anyone when you are not on speaking terms. I wish Mr. Macneillie would have let her have the ‘Star’ room, but he always will keep the one nearest the stage for himself whether it is good or bad. Bother! there’s not room to swing a cat in this place! I wish they would give us more decent rooms.” Jessica’s dress required a great deal of pinning and draping. It was by no means easy to dispose of the long trailing fold of light Liberty silk, and Ivy was in an impatient mood. Suddenly as she tossed the end of a bit of light gauze drapery over her shoulder it caught by some mischance in the gas jet from which she had, against rules, removed the guard while curling her fringe. In an instant it was flaring all about her, and wild with fright she found it impossible to free herself from its serpent like coils.