Jeanne started.
“Was it very terrible?”
“Oh, no. It was beautiful, exquisite!” The prima donna’s eyes shone with a frank truthfulness. Jeanne could not doubt. It made her feel all hot and cold inside.
“Would you like to dance before all that?” The smiling woman spread her arms wide. “All those seats filled with people?”
“Oh, yes!” Jeanne caught her breath sharply.
“It is really quite simple,” the lady went on. “You look up at the people, then you look back at the stage and at the ones who are to act or sing with you. Then you say: ‘I have only to do it all quite naturally, as if they, the people in the seats, were not there at all. If I do that they will be pleased. And when I succeed in doing that, they like me.’
“So you think you’d enjoy it,” she went on musingly.
“Oh, yes; but—but not yet,” the little girl cried. “Sometime in the dreamy future. Now I want my own stage in my own sweet little theatre, and I want to be with just my own little Golden Circle.”
“Brave girl!” The prima donna seized her hand and squeezed it tight. “You are indeed wise for your years.
“But you said ‘with my own little Golden Circle.’ What is this circle?”