On the final curtain of the hundredth night the company bowed two curtain-calls to the capacity house busily struggling into wraps and up aisles.
The Red Widow, linked between the pickle-magnate and the triumphant son, flanked by sextets, octets, and regimentals, bowed four times over three sheaths of American beauties and a high-handled basket of carnations.
Then, almost on the drop of the curtain, the immediate roar of sliding wings, which mingled with the exit strains of the orchestra, like a Debussy right-hand theme defying the left, and the rumble of forests, retreating.
Scene-shifters, to whom every encore is a knell, demolished whole kingdoms at a lunge, half a hundred satin slippers flashed up a spiral staircase to chorus dressing-rooms, the Red Widow flung the trail of the gown she had on—so carelessly dragged across the tarpaulin terra firma of Bungel—across one bare arm and darted through the door with a red star painted on the panel.
Her dressing-room, hung in vivid chintz, with a canopied table replacing the make-up shelf, and a passing show of signed photographs tacked along the wall, was as fantastic as Gnomes' Cave.
A wildness of chiffon and sleazy silk hung from the wall-hooks, a pair of gauze aeroplane wings hovered across a chair, and, atop a trunk, impertinent as a Pierette, the black pony was removing the gold star from her hair.
"Warm house to-night, Del. I sent Sibbie across to the hotel with your flowers."
"Yeh—best house yet."
"But gee! it's a wonder he wouldn't give away kerosene."
"Rotten stuff."