“They’d hope the manager might. There’s been a lot of things done to stage people these last years. Blackmail. Graft. No end.”
“There’s the gypsies,” said Swen. “Where’d she get that God of Fire?”
“Bought it. Seventy-five cents.”
“Seventy-five cents!” Swen stared.
Florence told him the story of the Fire God. “There’s something in that,” said Swen. “They’re a queer lot, these Romanies. I’ve been studying them in their flats over by the big settlement house. Picked up some fantastic bit of music for the play. Got their own laws, they have. Don’t care a rap for our laws. If they wanted Jeanne and her god, they’d take her. That’s their way.”
In the meantime the hour was growing late. The manager and director must be faced in the morning. An important rehearsal had been set for nine A. M. Angelo could shut his eyes and picture the director’s rage when Jeanne failed to show up.
“He’ll have to be told,” he said.
“Yes,” Dan Baker understood, “he will. What is worse, he’ll have to know how and why. We can’t tell him why. But when we tell him how it all came about and just what she was doing at the time, then may the good Father be kind to us all!”
“We’ll face it all better if we have a little sleep.” Florence moved toward the door. The party broke up. A very sad party it had been.
As Florence rode home she closed her eyes and allowed the events of the past weeks to drift through her mind. These had been happy, but anxious weeks. To her, as to millions of others during this time of great financial depression, when millions were out of work and hunger stalked around the corner, there had come the feeling that something great, powerful and altogether terrible was pressing in upon her from every side.