After that, Lily had nothing left to do. She went out with Glass-Eye and walked round to the front to look at her lithos. She saw to her annoyance that a serio was topping the bill—and a comic singer middling it and a cinematograph bottoming it. But no matter, she had a good place, just under the bill-topper.
Next came shopping, through the windows. She bought a pair of thread gloves for Glass-Eye at Lewis’s and then went in and lay on her bed, feeling ever so tired from getting up late that morning. She dreamed and dreamed, while Glass-Eye went marketing. As soon as Lily was alone, the thought pricked her like a pin: looking pretty, indeed! Her gentlemen friends! Jimmy, that traitor, and Trampy! Trampy would be sure to play her some dirty trick. Oh, if she could get a divorce from him, in spite of all! She had made inquiries in London. She would want a solicitor. She must have one, to set inquiries on foot.... She could have as many witnesses as she pleased: all those girls ... and the stage hands ... and two artistes, on the day when Trampy, in his fury, had flung his bike at her on the stairs; the pedal had grazed her temple, yes, at Dresden. That wasn’t the way to treat a lady. Everything that had happened was his fault; and they’d see who won the day, he or she. Her forehead wrinkled up with anger when she thought of it. She bit her lips and clenched her fists and then ... and then ... enough of that! She’d see to-morrow. And other cares came to bother her: the indispensable things which she would have to buy at the end of the week out of her salary; open-work stockings, an aigrette for the theater, a little black bog-oak pig to wear at her wrist. And Jimmy’s thousand marks ...
“Damn it, let him wait!” And, with her hand on her lucky charm, Lily fell asleep.
In the evening, at the theater, she forgot everything. She felt a longing, a fevered desire to appear. When her turn came, after the xylophones, who seemed, behind their tables laden with bottles, to be keeping a bar of musical sounds; when the light shining on the great back-drop threw up into dazzling relief the blue sea, the blue sky and the white colonnade and terraces; when, amid the flash of the lime-light and the thunder of the orchestra, she made her entrance on the stage, Lily had a smile of triumph. Life was beginning for her at last! She could have cried out for happiness to that human mass which, behind the flaming streak of the footlights, spread itself, bare-necked and bedizened, in the warm shadow of the front boxes. And she directed a scarlet smile, set off with a glint of gold, to the audience.
“I believe I was grand to-night,” said Lily, as she went off, out of breath. “Oh, if there had been an agent in the house! But no such luck: they’re never there when they’re wanted! And those two fellows,” she thought to herself. “If they had been there, they’d have died of jealousy.”
Everybody spoiled her. She needed a strong head to resist the flatteries with which she was overwhelmed, both as artiste and woman. For instance, when a row of Roofers were puffing away on the stage, some manager, who had known her when she was “that high,” was sure to observe that her talent, her firm, round hips—“Eh, Lily, you’ve got plenty of that now!” ... Lily blushed under the compliment—would make more impression than a whole herd of Roofers:
“Eh, Lily? I say, what are you doing to-night? Come and have some ...”
“Glass-Eye, my handkerchief,” Lily broke in, suspecting an invitation to supper.
Glass-Eye, in obedience to a gesture of Lily’s, opened the wrist-bag, gave Lily the lace handkerchief and Lily hid her mocking smile in a scented gesture. Then:
“Good-by. Ta-ta!”