“Yes, I'm right here,” answered Billy, wearily. Arkwright answered, too, but not aloud—which was wise.
“Oh dear! you're tired, I know,” wailed the fairy, “but if you would please come and help us just a minute! Could you?”
“Why, yes, of course.” Billy rose to her feet, still wearily.
Arkwright touched her arm. She turned and saw his face. It was very white—so white that her eyes widened in surprised questioning.
As if answering the unspoken words, the man shook his head.
“I can't, now, of course,” he said. “But there is something I want to say—a story I want to tell you—after to-morrow, perhaps. May I?”
To Billy, the tremor of his voice, the suffering in his eyes, and the “story” he was begging to tell could have but one interpretation: Alice Greggory. Her face, therefore, was a glory of tender sympathy as she reached out her hand in farewell.
“Of course you may,” she cried. “Come any time after to-morrow night, please,” she smiled encouragingly, as she turned toward the stage.
Behind her, Arkwright stumbled twice as he walked up the incline toward the outer door—stumbled, not because of the semi-darkness of the little theatre, but because of the blinding radiance of a girl's illumined face which he had, a moment before, read all unknowingly exactly wrong.
A little more than twenty-four hours later, Billy Neilson, in her own room, drew a long breath of relief. It was twelve o'clock on the night of the twentieth, and the operetta was over.