She liked the consciousness that unless she appeared at the Union Family Theater at two-fifteen and at eight-fifteen she was breaking into the continuity of a sequence of events in which she had her place.
She was already in the rush of assurance that followed her sense of earning capacity, regarding the Union Family Theater merely as a means to an end, and in spare time had registered at two concert bureaus, read off the same building of plate-glass windows, and had purchased the score of "Carmen," humming Michaela's aria, in bed of mornings. There was a letter she had once obtained from Max Rinehardt, addressed:
"To Whom It May Concern. Miss Lilly Becker has studied with me for a period of three years. I consider her voice a lyric soprano of fine quality."
Evidently it concerned no one. The clerk at the concert bureau tossed it aside without comment. Visigoth, when he read it one day in the wings, returned it in just that manner.
She was secretly ashamed of her professional debut in a role that would not have survived the ridicule of even Flora Bankhead's easy standards. Many a time, together at matinées, they had giggled and munched chocolates over acts that hardly rivaled hers for sentimental appeal of about one dimension. Plenty of length and no depth.
To a series of colored views thrown upon the screen, Lilly sang from a dark stage into the warm musk and stale linen-smelling theater, a ballad as slow and sweet as taffy in the pulling.
"Dressed up in her gingham gown,
Just to come with me to town.
How the sun was shining down!
It seemed to bless our lit-tul wedding day."
CHORUS:
"Darling Sue—e dear,
How I miss your laughing!
Seems to me I hear it in the same old way.
Darling Sue dear, don't believe I'm chaffing.
Bless your heart! I love you in the same old way."
Lights! Revealing Lilly in the pink mull and dangling sunbonnet beside the blank white screen. They liked her, invariably demanding encore, this time the words and score of the chorus thrown upon the screen and, to Lilly's importunings and pretty encouragement, the house joining in.