"Would the gentlemen come upstairs, Miss Bellairs was just taking off her make-up."
"Come on," Swetenham whispered to Dick; "Fanny is a caution, she doesn't mind a bit what sort of state you see her in."
The boy led them up the stairs, through a small door and across what was evidently the back of the stage. At the foot of some steps on the further side he came to pause outside a door on which he knocked violently.
"Come in," Fanny's voice shrilled from inside; "don't mind us."
The boy with a grin threw the door open and indicated with his thumb that Swetenham and Dick might advance. He winked at them as they passed him, a fund of malignant impudence in his eyes. The room inside was small and scattered with a profusion of clothes. Fanny, attired in a long silk dressing wrap, sat on a low chair by the only table, very busy with a grease-pot and a soft rag removing the paint from her face. She turned to smile at Swetenham and held out her hand to Dick when he was introduced with a disarming air of absolute frankness.
"You catch me not looking my best," she acknowledged; "just take a seat, dears; I'll be as beautiful as ever in a jiffy."
Joan—Dick's eyes found her at once—was standing in a corner of the room behind the door. She had changed into a blouse and skirt, but the change had evidently only just been completed. The fluffy flounces of her dancing skirt lay on the ground beside her and the make-up was still on her face. At this close range it gave her eyes a curiously beautiful appearance—the heavy lashes, the dark-smudged shadows, adding to their size and brilliancy. She did not come forward to greet the two men, but she lifted those strange eyes and returned Dick's glance with a stare in which defiance and a rather hurt self-consciousness were oddly mixed.
The tumult of anger and regret which had surged up in his heart as he had watched her dance died away as he looked at her; pity, and an intense desire to shield her, took its place. He moved forward impulsively, and Fanny, noticing the movement, turned with a little laugh.
"I had forgotten," she said; "my manners are perfectly scandalous. Joan, come out of your corner and be introduced. Mr. Swetenham is going to take us to supper at the 'Grand,' so he has just confided into my shell-like ear. I can do with a bit of supper, can't you?"
Joan dragged her eyes away from Dick. The painted lashes lay like stiff threads of black against her cheeks. "I don't think I will come," she answered. "I am tired to-night, Fanny, and I shan't be amusing."