The dressing-room door suddenly opened, and they saw the girl standing there unsteadily, but as they approached she took a backward step and leaned against the wall.
Her eyes had slowly widened, as they had widened before under the sickening and staggering blows of tragedy. Her lips moved to speak, but for a while could shape no words. From her shaken bosom came a long and pitiful moan, which was not loud, and then her voice returned, and she said, "I heard you. They are—gone."
Smitherton knew that words could hardly help. He closed the door again and turned aside. Even Lewis moved away and stood silent.
But a few minutes later the dressing-room door once more swung outward and they saw her at the threshold. She had thrown a cloak around her. The deadly pallor of her cheeks was grotesquely heightened by the remnants of rouge which her shaking fingers had failed to completely remove. Her eyes were wide and staring, gazing into the future or the past ... into eternity it might have been.
Mr. Abey Lewis laid a hand on her arm.
"Miss Burton," he suggested, "you ain't quite got the paint off yet. It needs a little more cold cream, still." But Mary did not hear him. She heard nothing; saw nothing of these surroundings which stood for the pitifully wasted crucifixion of all her instincts of delicacy.
"This evening at eight," the manager reminded her. "Don't forget—and maybe you'll feel better then."
For a moment she halted. She had reached the stage-door, other performers were leaving the theater. She gazed back into the face of Mr. Abey Lewis, and said blankly, "This evening—what is this evening?"
They sought to stop her, but there was something in those wide eyes that petrified them all. For the time Mr. Lewis remained as one hypnotized. The door-man was gazing at her with an expression of awe and wonderment.
Mary herself stood there with the cloak falling open so that the convulsive throbbing of her throat was laid bare. The two marvelous and mismated eyes looked at them all and did not see them. The sister of Hamilton Burton, the woman whom two continents had toasted, was seeing other things. "Let me pass," she commanded, and they stood aside and saw her go out into the gathering night and the blizzard.