And they shook hands, like good friends, nothing more.
Glass-Eye frightened off the admirers with her fixed stare. And Lily had no lack of them. She loved flirting. She wanted adulation, wanted to be made much of. She had a revenge to take, arrears to make up; she and sympathy had, till then, been strangers. She now took her fill of it, got carried away, saw nothing but lovers around her, three or four at a time, as when the comic quartet, the Out-of-Tunes, used to grin kisses to her in the street. It was for her that they were there, every one of them, down to the acting managers, who did not disdain to come round from the front and take a turn on the stage. It might be a question of steam-pipes or electric wires; no matter, Lily took it all to herself, made herself amiable toward their dress-coats and white shirt-fronts, and said “’K you!” with the great stage bow, the body bent in a sweeping curtsey, when they complimented her on her firm, round hips. She stabbed them with smiles, to make sure of complimentary phrases in their weekly reports to the central boards. All of them; the electrician, the conductor of the band, she had them all at her feet. It became a need for Lily to see people all around her dying for love. It gave her a feeling of mingled pride and remorse.
“Can I help it, Glass-Eye?” she would ask, to quiet her conscience. “They’re mad. They would leave their wives and children for me!”
She had an autograph album filled with “thoughts” and declarations:
“I love you! Je vous aime! Ich liebe dich!”
In the pros’ smoking-room.
Lily, now that the audience was good for invitations to supper, bouquets and sweets, occupied herself with that somber mass which, formerly, did not cause her so much uneasiness as the presence of her Pa. Lily, like a real stage-girl, who had beheld waves miles high between Harwich and the Hook of Holland, saw in a few flowers a bouquet large enough to fill a cab and the least little love letter grew, in her eyes, into an offer to present her with motor-cars and to abandon wife and child. If a gentleman, for once in a way, stood on the pavement waiting for her, she dreamed of an elopement. And there were pros, too, who prowled around her, in the half light of the wings, and came up to her with outstretched hand: