There was a crowd in front of the Bijou when she arrived. They were commenting on a notice pasted on the door:

“FermÉ.”

What could that mean? Lily had not provided for this in her vocabulary of the French language; but the theater was closed until new arrangements could be made. It meant complete ruin, enforced idleness....

“The rotten lot!” growled Lily. “Money, damn it, money! Pay up, you pack of thieves!”

But Lily soon recovered herself, when she saw that there was nothing to be done. She had been through worse than that, when the iron curtain all but smashed her to a jelly, at Milwaukee, and when she tumbled into the orchestra, at Glasgow! Notwithstanding the anguish that wrung her inside and heralded the coming hunger, Lily put a good face on the matter before all those people, like a lady who is above that sort of thing: a disappointment, that was all.

“But how will those small artistes manage?” she seemed to say. “Those families with babies?”

Lily declared that it was very sad, called Glass-Eye to witness, as usual; but poor Glass-Eye remained dumb, reflected that she would never, never be paid, if this went on. Lily owed her eighteen months’ wages now! True, she got enough to eat, or nearly; she traveled with Lily; and she wore her old hats.

Meanwhile, the door opened; the artistes were allowed to take away the implements of their work, before the final closing. The move began: they fetched out basket trunks, hoisted packing-cases on to cabs. It was a heartrending sight, all those things, made for the glitter of the footlights, now displayed in the street. And everybody made such haste as he could, under the eyes of the inquisitive passers-by, for fear of a general execution, with every door sealed up and days to wait before one could recover one’s property. Fellow-artistes from other theaters came to look on. Some were indignant that the Artistes’ Federation could not take up the matter and hurl the experience of its lawyers at the heads of the proprietor or syndicate responsible, to say nothing of the moral weight of its five thousand members, who had already made the English music-halls come to terms by means of a wholesale strike. Others observed that it was a private theater, one of those theaters run, for the fun of it, by some prosperous gambler or lucky bookmaker; a sort of harem theater, with almost empty houses, but with swells on the stage, among the swarm of half-naked women; and no one responsible, the old boy ruined, the treasury empty, bankruptcy; couldn’t be helped; take in your belt a peg, that’s all!

“What do you think of this, eh, Lily?” asked a voice. “Only yesterday we were passing the hat for others!”

Lily still had the list; and the money was locked up in one of the dressing-rooms. Then it passed from mouth to mouth, like a watchword: they would give back the collection; but not in the street, not before everybody, for the honor of the profession. Lily, quite excited, entered the passage and there, in the dim light, assisted by two one-legged artistes, who called out the amounts and ticked off the names, she handed back the collection of the previous day. Some received their share with an air of furious determination; others looked shy and blushed; others, again, refused, Lily among them; and it was decided to go to the “Pros’ Corner,” or artistes’ bar, near the stage entrance, to drink up what remained: the ups and downs of life, damn it! Your turn to-day, mine to-morrow; jolly lucky not to break a leg, after all! And their gaiety returned, amid the smoke and the glasses, through a need of reaction; and, after the first drink or two, came jokes, after-dinner stories, impromptus which had traveled ten times round the world and brought tears of laughter to the eyes of the audiences in thousands of music-halls, not to speak of the second-class cabins of every ship of every line and the smoking-carriages of every train, from the G. I. P. R. of Bombay to the S. F. of Buenos Ayres.

And they joined in the chorus and they sang, “We all came into this world with nothing!” and the one-legged artistes beat time with their crutches, my! the pink Hour and the scarlet Hour, who were there, got a stitch in their sides. Lily, with her head flung back, full-throated, laughed nervously. Besides, as she said, artistes did as they pleased and didn’t care a hang for anybody! All made plans for the morrow, all had been through that sort of thing before and much worse, too: six stories cleared at a bound, to escape from a theater in flames! Falls of seventy feet on one’s head! And wrecks! And waves miles high! Already they began to talk of going away, of traveling; traced the route with their finger on the table: Cape Town, Australia, the States. To listen to them, those everlasting wanderers seemed to have pretty nearly the whole world under their hands. They spoke of taking a rest at their permanent addresses: good old London; good old Manchester; there was nothing like good old England, after all, eh? They’d had enough of the Dago countries!

But enthusiasm broke out when the great news arrived, brought by some one straight from the agencies: Harrasford—“Guess, boys!”—Harrasford had bought the Bijou Theater! It was all signed and sealed. He was carrying out his program: and he wanted to open at once. For three months, it appeared, there had been a silent struggle between him and the unlucky bookmaker, who did not want to sell; and Harrasford had got it almost for nothing; he had practically won it, yesterday, at the races,—with Dare Devil, his wonderful horse. Dare Devil had beaten Cataplasm, his rival’s colt, and the smash had followed at once: the Bijou closed; a forced sale; Harrasford had bagged it; and that was one, with more to come!

The artistes were carried away by this daring stroke! Harrasford, a son of a gun, who could put them all in his pocket! The one-legged artistes fought a mock duel between France and England, the victor to marry Lily: what did they think of that? Hurrah!

“Say, boys, which is the quickest way of dropping money?”

“Fast women!”

“No, slow horses!”

It was grand. They drank to everybody’s health. They drank to Harrasford; they drank to the Astrarium! They counted the money on the bar-counter; the amount of the collection had been greatly exceeded and somebody suggested that it was a nice thing, upon my word, yes, a very nice thing, what they were doing: having a good time, while the Bambinis, perhaps, were going to bed without any supper! The whiskies and sodas had warmed their hearts: my turn to-day, yours to-morrow, damn it! It might happen to any of them, to hop the twig and leave Bambinis behind him.

“Lily, the hat!”

And Lily handed round the hat again and collected more than on the day before, even among those who had had their money back.

“Take that to the Bambinis,” they said. “We’ve been behaving like Dagoes, damn it! Artistes ought not to act as such!”

“’K you! ’K you!”

And Lily Clifton walked off, very proudly, with her maid, to hand the money to Nunkie, who was acting as treasurer.

“And, meantime, one’s got to live,” said Lily to herself, when she was outside.

After the spurious gaiety of the moment, she seemed to be returning to her distress, with no work, no money, the Bijou closed, Harrasford taking possession of the theater. She revolved all this in her head, without succeeding in connecting the whole: rags of ideas hung in her brain, like the strips of scenery at the back of the stage. She had not even the courage to go and take her bike ... to-morrow ... to-morrow. The Hours, the pink one and the scarlet one, who came out of the bar also, resigned themselves gaily. Their salary mattered so little. As they explained to Lily, you’re always well paid, when you have rich friends, and, if you haven’t, all you have to do is to look out for them:

“Like Poland, what! A fat lot she cares the old boy’s ruined! All she will do is to find another, change her owner!”

Lily had knocked up against everything, seen everything, heard everything, in her adventurous life; but this way of getting out of a difficulty always made her blush to her eyes. No, a triumph at the Astrarium: that was the only solution for her, Lily Clifton! She was eager also to hand the money to Nunkie. The Bambinis’ money was a different matter from Jimmy’s: they were hungry children. Nunkie must be at the theater now, with his Three Graces, quite close, and they were going to perform at the Astrarium. So it was not essential never to have appeared in Paris! That meant one more chance for her!

“Come along, Glass-Eye!”

They now passed into the noisy quarters. The Olympia opened its furnace of light before them. The Three Graces stood displayed in life-size on posters, with others beside them, names which Lily knew vaguely, as she knew them all, from seeing them somewhere,—as she knew the stage-entrance of the Olympia, by instinct, in the dark street, at the side: the mouth by which the monster nightly swallowed and rejected its fill of meat. A courtyard ... three steps up ... turn to the right ... Lily was at home again, amid rainbow lights.

“Hullo, Lily!”

It was Nunkie greeting her on the stage, while his dear girls were dressing in their room. He took the money for the Bambinis, congratulated Lily on the result of her collection, thanked her.

“And what about the Astrarium?” asked Lily. “Do you know...?”

Of course, Nunkie knew. His dear girls were engaged to perform there. And he had seen some one on his way to the theater: the opening would take place in a month ... in six weeks at the latest....

The architect—“You know, Lily?” said Nunkie—the architect who used to hang about on the stage, in the passages, on some pretext or other—to make love to girls, apparently—was minding everything for Harrasford! He was taking measurements, drawing out plans:

THE ARCHITECT