THE snow was crisp and the air as cold as ice. We were playing the last performance of “Uncle Tom’s Cabin.” We had been playing it for two weeks, and I had been given two different parts, Marie Claire, in which, to my joy, I wore a gold wig and a lace tea-gown—which I made from an old pair of lace curtains and a lavender silk dress mama had had when they were rich and she dressed for dinner—and Cassy. I did love that part where Cassy says:

“Simon Legree, you are afraid of me, and you have reason to be, for I have got the devil in me!”

I used to hiss those words at him and glare until the audience clapped me for that. Ada saw me play Cassy one night, and she went home and told mama that I had “sworn like a common woman before all the people on the stage” and that I ought not to be allowed to disgrace the family. But little I cared for Ada in those days. I was learning to be an actress!

On this last night, in fact, I experienced all the sensations of a successful star. Someone had passed up to me, over the footlights if you please, a real bouquet of flowers, and with these clasped to my breast, I had retired smiling and bowing from the stage.

To add to my bliss, Patty Chase, the girl who played Topsy, came running in to say that a gentleman friend of hers was “crazy” to meet me. He was the one who had sent me the flowers. He wanted to know if I wouldn’t take supper with him and a friend and Patty that night.

My! I felt like a regular professional actress. To think an unknown man had admired me from the front, and was actually seeking my acquaintance! I hesitated, however, because Patty was not the sort of girl I was accustomed to go out with. I liked Patty pretty well myself, but my brother Charles had one day come to the house especially to tell papa some things about her—he had seen me walking with Patty on the street—and papa had forbidden me to go out with her again. As I hesitated, she said:

“It isn’t as if they are strangers, you know. One of them, Harry Bond, is my own fellow. You know who his folks are, and but for them we’d have been married long ago. Well, Harry’s friend, the one who wants to meet you, is a swell, too, and he hasn’t been out from England long. Harry says his folks are big nobs over there, and

he is studying law here. His folks send him a remittance and I guess it’s a pretty big one, for he’s living at the Windsor, and I guess he can treat us fine. So come along. You’ll not get such a chance again.”

“Patty,” I said, “I’m afraid I dare not. Mama hates me to be out late, and, see, it’s eleven already.”

“Why, the night’s just beginning,” cried Patty.

There was a rap at the door, and Patty exclaimed:

“Here they are now!”

All the girls in the room were watching me—enviously, I thought—and one of them made a catty remark about Patty, who had gone out in the hall, and was whispering to the men. I decided not to go, but when I came out of the room there they were all waiting for me and Patty exclaimed:

“Here she is,” and, dragging me along by the hand, she introduced me to the men.

I found myself looking up into the face of a tall young man of about twenty-three. He had light curly hair and blue eyes. His features were fine and clear-cut, and, to my girlish eyes, he appeared extraordinarily handsome and distinguished, far more so even than Colonel Stevens, who had, up till then, been my ideal of manly perfection. Everything he wore had an elegance about it from his evening suit and the rich fur-lined overcoat to his opera hat and gold-topped cane. I felt flattered and overwhelmingly impressed to think that such a fine personage should have singled me out for especial attention. What is more, he was looking at me with frank and undisguised admiration. Instead of letting go my hand, which he had taken when Patty introduced us, he held it while he asked me if he couldn’t have the pleasure of taking me out to supper. As I hesitated, blushing and awfully thrilled by the hand pressing mine, Patty said:

“She’s scared. Her mother won’t let her stay out late at night. She’s never been out to supper before.”

Then she and Harry Bond burst out laughing, as if that were a good joke on me, but Mr. Bertie (his name was the Honorable Reginald Bertie—pronounced Bartie) did not laugh. On the contrary, he looked very sympathetic, and pressed my hand the closer. I thought to myself:

“My! I must have looked lovely as Marie St. Claire. Wait till he sees me as Camille.”

“I’m not afraid,” I contradicted Patty, “but mama will be worried. She sits up for me.”

This was not strictly true, but it sounded better than to say that Ada was the one who always sat up for anyone in the house who went out at night. She even used to sit up for my brother Charles before he was married, and I could just imagine the cross-questioning she would put me through when I got in late. Irritated as I used to be in those days at what I called Ada’s interference in my affairs, I know now that she always had my best good at heart. Poor little delicate Ada! with her passionate devotion and loyalty to the family and her fierce, antagonistic attitude to all outside intrusion. She was morbidly sensitive.

Mr. Bertie quieted my fears by dispatching a messenger boy to our house with a note saying that I had gone with a party of friends to see the Ice Palace.

Even with Ada in the back of my mind, I was now, as Patty would say, “out for a good time,” and when Mr. Bertie carefully tucked the fur robes of the sleigh about me, I felt warm, excited and recklessly happy.

We drove over to the Square, where the Ice Palace was erected. The Windsor Hotel was filled with American guests who were on the balconies watching the torchlight procession marching around the mountain. My brother Charles was one of the snow-shoers, and the men were all dressed in white and striped blanket overcoats with pointed capuchons (cowls) on their backs or heads, and moccasins on their feet.

It was a beautiful sight, that procession, and looked like a snake of light, winding about old Mount Royal, and when the fireworks burst all about the monumental Ice Palace, inside of which people were dancing and singing, really it seemed to me like a scene in fairyland. I felt a sense of pride in our Montreal, and looking up at Mr. Bertie, to note the effect of so much beauty upon him, I found him watching me instead.

The English, when they first come out to Canada, always assume an air of patronage toward the “Colonials,” as they call us, just as if, while interested, they are also highly amused by our crudeness. Now Mr. Bertie said:

“We’ve seen enough of this Ice Palace’s hard, cold beauty. Suppose we go somewhere and get something warm inside us. Gad, I’m dry.”

Harry told the driver to take us to a place whose name I could not catch, and presently we drew up before a brilliantly lighted restaurant. Harry Bond jumped out, and Patty after him. I was about to follow when I felt a detaining hand upon my arm, and Bertie called out to Bond:

“I’ve changed my mind, Bond. I’ll be hanged if I care to take Miss Ascough into that place.”

Bond was angry, and demanded to know why Bertie had told him to order supper for four. He said he had called the place up from the theatre. I thought that queer. How could they

have known I would go, since I had not decided till the last minute?

“Never mind,” said Bertie. “I’ll fix it up with you later. Go on in without us. It’s all right.”

Harry and Patty laughed, and, arm-in-arm, they went into the restaurant. All the time Bertie had kept a hand on my arm. I was too surprised and disappointed to utter a word, and after he had again tucked the rug about me, he said gently:

“I wouldn’t take a sweet little girl like you into such a place, and that Patty isn’t a fit person for you to associate with.”

I said:

“You must think I’m awfully good.”

I was disappointed and hungry.

“Yes, I do think so,” he said gravely.

“Well, I’m not,” I declared. “Besides, I’m going to be an actress, and actresses can do lots of things other people get shocked about. Mr. Davis says they are privileged to be unconventional.”

“You, an actress!” he exclaimed. He said the word as if it were something disgraceful, like Ada might have said it.

“Yes,” I returned. “I’ll die if I can’t be one.”

“Whatever put such an idea in your head. You’re just a refined, innocent, sweet, adorable little girl, far too sweet and pure and lovely to live such a dirty life.”

He was leaning over me in the sleigh, and holding my hand under the fur robe. I thought to myself: “Neither St. Vidal nor Colonel Stevens would make love as thrillingly as he can, and he’s certainly the handsomest person I’ve ever seen.”

I felt his arm going about my waist, and his young face come close to mine. I knew he was going to kiss me, and I had never been kissed before. I became agitated and frightened. I twisted around and pulled away from him so that despite his efforts to reach my lips his mouth grazed, instead, my ear. Much as I really liked it, I said with as much hauteur as I could command:

“Sir, you have no right to do that. How dare you?”

He drew back, and replied coldly:

“I beg your pardon, I’m sure. I did not mean to offend you.”

He hadn’t offended me at all, and I was debating how on earth I was to let him know he hadn’t, and at the same time keep him at the “proper distance” as Ada would say, when we stopped in front of our house. He helped me out, and lifting his hat loftily, was bidding me good-bye when I said shyly:

“M-Mr. Bertie, you—you d-didn’t offend me.”

Instantly he moved up to me and eagerly seized my hand. His face looked radiant, and I did think him the most beautiful man I had ever seen. With a boyish chuckle, he said:

“I’m coming to see you to-morrow night. May I?”

I nodded, and then I said:

“You mustn’t mind our house. We’re awfully poor people.” I wanted to prepare him. He laughed boyishly at that and said:

“Good heavens, that’s nothing. So are most of my folks—poor as church mice. As far as that goes, I’m jolly poor myself. Haven’t a red cent except what the governor sends out to me. I’m going to see you anyway, and not your house.”

He looked back at the driver whose head was all muffled up under his fur collar. Then he said:

“Will you give me that kiss now?”

I returned faintly:

“I c-can’t. I think Ada’s watching from the window.”

He looked up quickly.

“Who’s Ada?”

“My sister. She watches me like a hawk.”

“Don’t blame her,” he said softly, and then all of a sudden he asked:

“Do you believe in love at first sight?”

“Yes,” I answered. “Do you?”

“Well, I didn’t—till to-night, but, by George, I do—now!”