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streaming light. Tony Only when they had moved on, and I heard them sharing a prised my fingers from his sleeve, and held my hand. 'Just joke with the stage door-keeper, did I realise that they were 31

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    the trio of tumblers taking their leave for the night, and that was dressed in the trousers and the shoes that she had worn their bags contained their spangles. I had a sudden fear that for her act, but she had removed the jacket, the waistcoat, Kitty Butler might after all be just like them: plain, and, of course, the hat. Her starched shirt was held tight unremarkable, almost I unrecognisable as the handsome girl against the swell of her bosom by a pair of braces, but I had seen swaggering in the glow of the footlights. I very gaped at the throat where she had undipped her bow-tie.
    nearly called to Tony to take me back; but he had Beyond the shirt I saw an edge of creamy lace.
    descended the staircase, and when I caught up with him in I looked away. 'I do like your act,' I said.
    the passageway below he was at a door, and had already
    'I should think you do, you come to it so often!'
    turned its handle.
    I smiled. 'Well, Tony lets me in, you see, for nothing . . .'
    The door was one of a row of others, indistinguishable from That made her laugh: her tongue looked very pink, her teeth its neighbours but for a brass figure 7, very old and extraordinarily white, against her painted lips. I felt myself scratched, that was screwed at eye level upon its centre blush. 'What I mean is,' I said, 'Tony lets me have the box.
    panel, and a hand-written card that had been tacked below.
    But I would pay if I had to, and sit in the gallery. For I do Miss Kitty Butler, it said.
    so like your act, Miss Butler, so very, very much.'
    I found her seated at a little table before a looking-glass; Now she did not laugh, but she tilted her head a little. 'Do she had half-turned - to reply, I suppose, to Tony's knock -
    you?' she answered gently.
    but at my approach she rose, and reached to shake my hand.
    'Oh, yes.'
    She was a little shorter than me, even in her heels, and Tell me what it is you like then, so much.'
    younger than I had imagined - perhaps my sister's age, of I hesitated. 'I like your costume,' I said at last. 'I like your one- or two-and-twenty.
    songs, and the way you sing them. I like the way you talk to
    'Aha,' she said, when Tony had left us - there was a hint, Tricky. I like your . . . hair.' Here I stumbled; and now she still, of her footlight manner in her voice - 'my mystery seemed to blush. There was a second's almost awkward admirer! I was sure it must be Gully you came to see; then silence - then, suddenly, as if from somewhere very near at someone said you never stay beyond the interval. Is it really hand, there came the sound of music - the blast of a horn me you stay for? I never had a fan before!' As she spoke she and the pulse of a drum - and a cheer, like the roaring of the leaned quite comfortably against the table - it was cluttered, wind in some vast sea-shell. I gave a jump, and looked I now saw, with jars of cream and sticks of grease-paint, about me; and she laughed. 'The second half," she said.
    with playing cards and half-smoked cigarettes and filthy After a moment the cheering stopped; the music, however, tea-cups - and crossed her legs at the ankle, and folded her went on pulsing and thumping like a great heart-beat.
    arms. Her face was still thickly powdered, and very red at She left off leaning against the table, and asked, Did I mind the lip; her lashes and eyelids were black with paint. She if she smoked? I shook my head, and shook it again when 33

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    she took up a packet of cigarettes from amongst the dirty
    - her mouth stretching wide, out of a kind of sympathy with cups and playing cards, and held it to me. Upon the wall her eyelids, and her breath misting the mirror. For a second there was a hissing gas-jet in a wire cage, and she put her she seemed quite to have forgotten me. I studied