F. Bannerman.

Brown called an early rehearsal next morning. They were to play The Waltz Dream as their last performance, for on leaving Sevenoaks the company was to break up, and just at the very last moment, before the curtain had come down on the previous night's performance, Grace Binning—the girl who usually played the part of Franzi—had fallen down and sprained her ankle. Who was to play her part? Fanny proposed Joan for the vacant place, but Brown was dubious, and Joan herself not at all anxious for the honour. She had more or less understudied the part, every member of the chorus took it in turn to understudy; but the question was whether it would not be better if Fanny's understudy took the part of the Princess and Fanny played Franzi. It was a character which she had often scored it. Against this had to be set the fact that Fanny's voice was needed for songs which the Princess had to sing, and that Franzi had very little singing to do. What she did have could be very largely cut.

Anyway the whole company assembled at 10.30, and Brown put them through their paces. Finally he decided on Joan; she had already achieved popularity by her dancing, the audience would be kind to her. If she saved up her voice for her duet with Strachan and her one little solo at the fall of the curtain, Brown thought she might be heard beyond the footlights.

"Now look slippy," he ordered, "only the principals need stay. We will just run through the thing, Miss Leicester, and see if you know what to do."

Joan found herself living out the part of Franzi as she rehearsed. It seemed somehow to fit into her own feelings.

"Now love has come to me, I pray,
That while I have the chance to,
I still may have the heart to play
A tune that you can dance to."

Franzi's one brief night of love which shone out, showing all the world golden, and then the little singer creeping back into the shadows with a broken heart but gay words on her lips.

"I still may have the heart to play
A tune that you can dance to."

Brown thought as he watched her that she showed promise as an actress. Why had he not noticed it before. He meditated a proposal by which she should be persuaded to join the company again when it started out on its Spring tour. Fanny had told him that Joan was tired of the life and meant to go back to office work, but if she had talent, that was of course absurd. Perhaps he had not done enough to encourage her. To-morrow he would have a good long talk with her and point out to her just how things stood.

Fanny, too, was impressed by Joan's powers. "You act as if you really meant it, honey," she said. "You make me want to cry in that last bit where Franzi goes off and leaves me, a bloated aristocrat on the throne, with my erring husband beside me. You make me think you feel it."

"Perhaps I do," Joan answered; "perhaps I am going back alone."

"But why," Fanny cried out; she ran to Joan and threw her arms round the other girl, they were in the dressing-room making up for the evening performance. "Why, honey? He is ready to go with you."

"And the Prince was ready to go with Franzi," Joan answered, "but she would not take him, not back into her land of shadows. Oh, Fanny, you are a dear, romantic soul, but you don't understand. Once, long ago when I was young, doesn't that sound romantic, there were two paths open to me and I chose the one which has to be travelled alone. If I dragged him on to it now it would only hurt him. You would not want to hurt something you loved," her voice dropped to a whisper, "would you?"

"No," Fanny admitted. She had drawn a little back and was watching Joan with wide eyes. "But——" she broke off abruptly. "I haven't any right to ask," she said, "but do you mean that there is something which you have done that you would be ashamed to tell him."

"Not exactly ashamed," Joan answered, "it would hurt him to know, that is all. I came to London two years ago because I was going to have a baby. It was never born, because I was in an accident a few months before it should have come."

"But why tell him, why tell him?" Fanny clamoured. "Men have lots of secrets in their lives which they don't tell to good women, why must they want to know all about our pasts. I have always thought I should tell a man just exactly as much as I wanted to and not a whisper more. Honey," she drew close again and caught hold of Joan's hands, "it doesn't pay to tell them, the better they are the more they bring it up against you. If they don't say anything you can see it in their eyes. 'She has been bad once,' they say, 'she may always be bad again.'"

"Yes," agreed Joan. "It does not pay to tell them, as you say. That is why I am going to go back to my own shadows alone, because if you love a person you cannot keep a secret from him."

"But it wouldn't exactly be a secret," Fanny pleaded, "it would just be something that it was no business of his to know."

Joan laughed. "Your philosophy of life, Fanny, is delightful. But if you don't hurry up with your dressing you will be late when the call boy comes."

She had the dressing-room to herself presently, for she did not have to appear until the second act, and as she sat there, reading over her part, the call boy put in his head with an impish grin.

"A gentleman left these for you, miss," he held out a large bunch of violets, "most particular you should get them before you went on, he was, and he will be round again after the show. Same gentleman," he winked at her, "as has been here most regular like since the third night."

"All right, Tommy, thank you," Joan answered. She held out her hands for the violets. They were very sweet-scented and heavy; she let them fall on the dressing-table, but after Tommy had vanished, whistling shrilly along the passage, she bent forward and buried her cheeks and lips in their fragrance. Her tears smarted in her eyes. This man had grown so suddenly dear to her that it hurt her almost more than she could bear to shut him out of her life.

When Fanny danced into the room presently it was to find her standing before the looking-glass, and against the soft blue of her waistbelt the violets showed up almost like a stain.

"He's there," Fanny told her, "third from centre in the second row. Young Swetenham is with him, but none of the women folk, praise be to heaven. Have you asked him to the supper afterwards?"

"No," Joan admitted, "and, Fanny, if it could possibly be arranged and Brown would not be very hurt, would it matter if I did not come myself? I feel so much more like going home to bed."

"Doesn't do to mope," Fanny remonstrated. "Why not bring him along and have one good evening to finish?"

She studied the other's face. "There," she added impulsively, "if you don't feel like it you shan't be made to do it. Bother Daddy Brown and his feelings. You stay here quiet and let us all get away; we will be walking over to the 'Queen's,' you see, then you can slip out after we have gone and cut home on your own. I will tell Brown you are over-wrought after the show, it is quite natural you should be."

"Yes," admitted Joan; she hesitated on her way out, for the call boy had just run down the passage shouting her name, "and, Fanny, if he is there"—she met the other girl's eyes just for a moment—"take him along with you, will you? I—I am afraid of meeting him to-night."

Joan caught Dick's eyes just for a second before she began her first song, but she was careful not to look his way again. For the rest she moved and acted in a dream, not conscious of the theatre or the audience. Yet she knew she must be playing her part passably well, for Strachan whispered to her at the end of the duet: "You are doing splendidly." And Brown himself was waiting to greet her with congratulations when she ran into the wings for a moment.

The heat of the theatre killed her violets; they were crushed and dead at the end of the second act, yet when she changed for the third she picked them up and pinned them in again. Franzi's part in the third act is very brief. She is called in to give evidence of the Prince's infidelity, and instead she persuades the Princess that her husband has always loved her. Then, as the happy pair kiss one another at the back of the stage, Franzi turns to the audience, taking them, as it were, into her confidence:

"Now love has come to me, I pray,
That while I have the chance to,
I still may have the heart to play
A tune that you can dance to."

Joan's voice broke on the last line, the little sob on which she caught her breath was more effective than any carefully-thought-out tragedy. With her eyes held by those other eyes in the audience she took the violets from her belt and held them, just for a second, to her lips. Then they fell from her hands and she stood, her last farewell said, straight and silent, while the house shouted over what they considered to be a very fine piece of acting. They would have liked to have had her back to bow to them after the fall of the curtain, but Joan would not go, and Fanny brought Brown to realize that if the girl were worried in any way she would probably wax hysterical.

"Fine acting," Brown kept repeating over and over again. Joan heard him vaguely. He was so impressed by it, however, that he sent for some champagne and insisted on their all drinking her health on the spot. There, however, he was content to leave it, and presently the company slipped away, one after the other, and Joan and Fanny were left alone.

"You really think you won't come on, honey?" Fanny tried a final argument before she followed the others. "He has sent up his card, you know; he is waiting downstairs for you."

"I simply can't, Fanny," Joan answered. "You go, like a dear, tell him anything you like; that I have gone on with Brown, or that I am coming later; only just persuade him to go away with you, that's all I ask."

Fanny looked at her reflectively, but she did not say anything further, gathering her cloak round her and going from the room.

Joan waited till the place seemed silent and deserted save for the call boy's shrill whistle as he strolled round, locking up the various dressing-rooms. She did not want him to see her as she groped her way back to the front of the stage and stooped to feel in the dark for her bunch of violets. It was quite ridiculous, but she could not leave them to lie there all night and be swept into the rubbish-basket in the morning. It took her a minute or two, but at last her hands closed on them and she stood up and moved into the light just as he came dashing along the passage.

"Hulloa," he called out to her, "you still here, miss? Everyone else has gone. You might have got shut in."

"I am just going myself," she answered; "and I knew you were here, Tommy; I heard you."

He followed her to the door and stood watching her along the street with curious eyes. To his mind it seemed strange that she should have stayed on after the others had gone. It betokened something that she wished to hide from prying eyes, and his were not satisfied till he saw a man's figure come forward out of the darkness and meet her.

"Thought as much," commented Tommy, the worldly-wise. "Gent of the violets, I suppose. Not likely they would be going to a crowded supper-party."

"I thought you were never coming," Dick was saying quickly to Joan. "Miss Bellairs told me you weren't feeling very well and were going straight home. I was just screwing up my courage to come upstairs and find out for myself what had happened to you."

So Fanny had failed her. Joan, guessing the other's purpose, smiled ruthfully.

"I had a headache," she admitted, "and I could not face a supper-party. I am so sorry you should have waited about, though; I had hoped you would go on with Fanny."

"Hoped!" said Dick. "Did you think I would?"

They had turned in the direction of the girls' lodgings and were walking very fast. Joan set the pace, also she was rather obstinately silent. Dick walked in silence, too, but for another reason. Clamorous words were in his heart; he did not wish to say them. Not yet, not here. Up in London, in her own place, when she would be free from the surroundings and trappings of theatrical life, he was going to ask her to marry him. Till then, and since his heart would carry on in this ridiculous way because she was near him, there was nothing for it but silence.

At the door of the house, though, he found his tongue out of a desire to keep her with him a little longer.

"You played splendidly to-night," he said, holding her hand. "Were those my violets you kissed at the end?"

"Yes," she answered; the words were almost a whisper, she stood before him, eyes lowered, breathing a little fast as if afraid.

The spell of the night, the force of his own emotion shook Dick out of his self-control. The street was empty and dimly lit, the houses on either side shuttered and dark. The two of them were alone, and suddenly all his carefully thought-out plans went to the wind.

"Joan," he whispered. She was all desirable with her little fluttered breath, her eyes that fell from his, her soft, warm hand. "Joan!"

Joan lifted shut eyes and trembling lips to his; she made no protest as he drew her into his arms, his kiss lifted her for the time being into a heaven of great content. So they clung together for a breathing-space, then Joan woke out of her dream and shuddered away from him, hiding her face in her hands.

"Oh, don't," she begged, "please, please don't!"

Her words, the very piteousness of her appeal, remembering all her circumstances, hurt Dick. "My dear," he said, "don't you understand; have I made you afraid? I love you; I have always loved you. I was going to have waited to ask you to marry me until next week when I came to you in town. But to-night, because I love you, because you are going away to-morrow, I couldn't keep sensible any longer. And anyway, Joan, what does it matter?—to-day or to-morrow, the question will always be the same. I love you, will you marry me, dear? No, wait." He saw her movement to answer. "I don't really want you to say anything now, I would rather wait till we meet in town next week. You are not angry with me, are you, Joan? You are not afraid of my love?"

But Joan could make no answer, only she turned from him and ran up the steps; the bunch of violets lay where she had dropped them when he caught her hands, but neither of them noticed it. He saw her face for a second against the lighted hall and a little to his dismay he could see that she was crying. Then she had gone and the door shut to behind her quickly.

Dick waited about for a little, but she made no sign, and finally he turned rather disconsolately away. One thought, however, was left to comfort him through the night, the memory of her soft, yielding hands, the glad surrender of her lips.