CHAPTER XXXIV
FLORENCE SPRINGS A SURPRISE
In the meantime, though lifted to the seventh heaven by the scene of entrancing beauty that lay beneath her, Petite Jeanne was suffering pangs of conscience.
“I must go!” she whispered to herself as, lying flat upon the iron grating, she drank in the beauty of the opera. “I surely must. Florence will miss me. There will be a fearful fuss. But one more look, only one.”
So she lingered and the minutes sped away.
The scene beneath her was the first from The Juggler of Notre Dame, one of matchless beauty. And, more than this, was not her friend playing the part of the Juggler?
Marjory Bryce was dressed in the very costume she had worn beneath her purple cape on that day when she sat beside Solomon and reviewed the light opera.
Now as she glided with matchless grace across the stage, as her crystal clear voice came drifting up, as she performed her act as a juggler, as she listened later in despair to the priest as he denounced her trick as inspired by the Devil, as at last, yielding, she consented to give up her gay life and enter the monastery, Jeanne found her an artist rare and inspired.
“No wonder her audience loves her!” she whispered to herself.
But now the scene was ended. Swiftly men worked, lifting stage settings toward her and lowering others to the stage, for in this modern playhouse all stage equipment was hung high above the stage. She realized that her time for escape had come. She had but to let herself down to the stage; the lift would do this for her; then she might dash unobserved across the back of the stage, and down the corridor.
“And if that man is there still,” she told herself stoutly, “I’ll see that three husky stage hands do for him just what needs to be done.”