"Yes, yes--and I'll be there."
"Au revoir, sweetheart!"
"Good-by--I won't be long."
The stage-door, like most stage-doors, was to be found in a cut-throat alley, so dark, dangerous, and forbidding in its aspect that it took all of Phyllis' courage to enter it. A ratty-looking individual, so compactly built into the entrance that he could open the door by a shove of his boot, exerted this labor-saving device in answer to her knock, and glowered at her from over the paper he was reading.
"What do you want?" demanded the ratty individual.
"I have an appointment with Mr. Adair."
He rose without a word; and leading her up some steps, guided her inside the theater. In the twilight of the wings were some stage-hands in overalls; an actor whom she recognized as the wicked prince, sitting on a soap-box, waiting listlessly for his cue; from the stage itself came the sound of voices raised to an unreal pitch, and strangely exciting and fantastic, in a cadence that was neither recitative nor speech. She could not help noticing, even in her agitation, the shabby, dilapidated, disorderly appearance of everything--the ropes, the dusty props, the frayed material of the scenes, the general air of comfortlessness--receiving the shock that comes to every one on first seeing the theater from the wrong side. But the ratty individual gave her no time to take more than a passing glance, leading the way with whispered warnings through a gorge of canvas, and down a twisting iron stair to the dressing-rooms below. He stopped at one of the little cabin-like doors, opened it, and ushered her in. Then he left her, and shuffled away with diminishing footfalls.
The dressing-room was bald, bare, uncarpeted, and painted a staring white. Below a mirror flanked by two flaring gas-jets there ran a sort of shelf on which were grease-paints, crayons, brushes, a pot of cold-cream, a pot of rouge, and other necessaries for "making up." From nails on the wall--common, every-day nails--there straggled an untidy line of men's clothes. On a box in the corner was a wash-basin, pitcher, soap, and a towel that was none too clean. Three empty chairs, and a wall decoration completed the picture. The wall decoration was a printed notice, in large and emphatic letters: "Smoking positively prohibited in this theater. Ladies must not use alcohol curling-irons."
Most young women, in a situation so equivocal and so unfamiliar, would have been ill at ease, frightened, apprehensive of many vague and dimly suspected dangers. But Phyllis' faith in Adair had none of this faltering quality. She loved, and loving she trusted. Her tremors had ended the moment the door had closed her in--the moment, in fact, when the others would have trembled most. To her, on the contrary, the little room breathed security for the very reason that it was Adair's. With adorable folly she pressed kisses on all his outstretched possessions; nuzzled her cheek against his coat; put her little foot beside one of his big man's shoes, delighting in the contrast--and altogether felt greatly comforted and refreshed.
After a while she heard a tremendous commotion overhead that swelled, sank and swelled again as the house broke into applause at the end of the act. There was a lumbering, scratchy, pattering sound as of a dozen pianos being moved at once by stalwart men in slippers--it was the new scene being set. The passageway outside, previously so still, resounded with a rush of feet--with exclamations and laughter as the company scudded to make their respective changes. The door was flung open, and there, brisk and smiling, on the threshold stood Corrèze!