CHAPTER XXX
TILTING FLOORS
The Grand Opera house became a veritable fairyland of adventure for Petite Jeanne. In this place and in her own little theatre she felt herself to be in a place of refuge. There were guards about. Entrance to the place was only to be gained through long, tortuous ways of red tape and diplomacy. No dark-faced gypsy, no would-be kidnaper could enter here. Thus she reasoned and sighed with content. Was she right? We shall see.
One afternoon, when a brief rehearsal of some small parts was over, not expecting Florence for a half hour or more, she gathered up her possession, her precious God of Fire, and tripping down the hallway arrived before the door that led to the land of magic, the great stage of the Opera.
Several times she had made her way shyly down this hall to open the door and peer into the promised land beyond. She had found it to be a place of magnificent transformations. Now it was a garden, now a castle, now a village green, and now, reverting to form, it was but a vast empty stage with a smooth board floor.
It was on this day only a broad space. Not a chair, not a shred of scenery graced the stage.
“How vast it is!” she whispered, as she looked in. She had been told that this stage would hold fifteen hundred people.
“What a place to dance all alone!”
The notion tickled her fancy. There was no one about. Slipping silently through the door, she removed her shoes; then, with the god still under her arm, she went tripping away to the front center of the stage. There, having placed her god in position, she drew a long breath and began to dance.
It was a delicate bit of a fantastic dance she was doing. As she danced on, with the dark seats gaping at her, the place seemed to come to life. Every seat was filled. The place was deathly silent. She was nearing the end of her dance. One moment more—and what then? The thunder of applause?
So real had this bit of fancy become to her that she clasped her hand to her heart in wild exultation.