"Will you!" she cried, delighted; and; running into the bedroom, she called back: "I will show you the costume for the second act first. You will fall down and adore me. Keep me talking, Teddy—I shall go into hysterics. Oh, I am so frightened!"
She tried her voice, singing a scale, inquiring anxiously, her head peering around the door: "That sounds bad, hein?"
"Marvelous!" said Beecher, who did not know one note from another.
Reassured, she entered radiantly, took two or three steps forward, and, lifting the castanets on her fingers, flung herself into the pose of Carmen exulting in the return of her lover.
"Carmen, Teddy," she cried, with a toss of her head. "Carmen is different from all other rôles. To succeed in Carmen, one must be a Carmen one's self—enfant de la Bohême. You like this? Wait—wait a moment."
Back in her bedroom, she continued, pausing from time to time to shriek at her maid: "Teddy, you do me so much good—you take my mind off.... Victorine, tu m'assassine! ... Teddy, they will think me beautiful, hein? You will stay—you will talk to me until I go?"
"Wish I could," said Beecher, to whom this peep behind the scenes was novel. "The deuce is, I'm dining with Mrs. Fontaine—going in her box."
"And Chartèrs—she is going too?"
"I don't know."
"What—you don't know?" she said, emerging, a shawl of shaded luminous greens flung over the shoulder of a russet taffeta. She seized him by the chin with the savage gesture of the Bohemian. "You lie to me! You love her—and you know!" Then, slipping on the sofa beside him, half playful, half feline, she pleaded: "Tell me, Teddy—tell me just to distract me. Be a nice boy—you see how nervous I am—please!"