If it were she now who played Lygia? Yes; it was she. They were calling her Lygia. Hampstead smiled to himself. Presently he chuckled softly, and the chuckle appeared to loose a small avalanche of new-born emotions that leaped and jumbled somewhere inside.
But the first encounter was disappointing. Miss Dounay seized him by the arm, without a glance,—her eyes being fixed on Mowrey,—and led the big man out of the scene exactly as if he had been a wooden Indian on rollers.
"Now," she said, "you have just carried me off." Her voice had wonderful tones in it, tones that started more avalanches inside; but she appeared as unconscious of the tones and their effect as of him. She was making another note in her part.
"Better practice that 'carry off stage' before we try it at rehearsal," called the sharp voice of Mowrey. His eyes and his remark were addressed to Miss Dounay. Miss Dounay nodded.
"Shall we?" she said, and looked straight at Hampstead, giving him his first glance into self-confident eyes which were clear, brownish-black, with liquescent, unsounded depths. In form it was a question she had asked; in effect it was a command from a very cool and business-like young person.
"I presume we had better," said John, affecting a foolish little laugh, which did not, however, get very far because the earnest air of Miss Dounay was inhospitable to levity.
"See here!" she instructed. "I throw up my arms in a faint. My left arm falls across your right shoulder. At the same time I give a little spring with my right leg, and I throw up my left leg like this. At the same instant you throw your right arm under my shoulders, your left arm gathers my legs; I will hold 'em stiff. There!"
Miss Dounay's arm was on John's shoulder, and she was preparing to suit the rest; of her action to her words. "Without any effort to lift me," she continued, talking now into his ear, "I will be extended in your arms. All you have to do is to be taking your running stride as I come to you, and after that to hold me poised while you bound off the stage. Can you do it?"
With this crisp, challenging question on her lips, Miss Dounay completed the proposed manoeuvre of her lower limbs, and John found himself with the long, exquisitely moulded body of a beautiful woman balancing in his arms, while a foolish quiver passed over him and shook him till he actually trembled.
