“Oh, yes! Yes, indeed I am.” She turned about.
“Then you may see much of it this season.” The mysterious woman in black was already turned about. She was walking away. Jeanne did not see her face, yet there was that about her voice, a depth, a melodious resonance, a something, that thrilled her to the very tips of her slender toes.
“Will wonders never end?” she asked herself, and found no answer.
CHAPTER VII
DREAMS OF OTHER DAYS
Petite Jeanne left the opera house that night in a brown study. She was perplexed beyond words. The necklace had not been found. She had made sure of that when, between the second and third act, she had discovered on a bulletin board of the lobby a typewritten notice of the loss and an offer of a reward for the return of the pearls.
“If the pearls had been found that notice would have been taken down,” she assured herself. “But if this is true, why did I go unmolested? One would suppose that at least I would be questioned regarding the affair. But no!” She shrugged her graceful shoulders. “They ask me nothing. They look and look, and say nothing. Oh, yes, indeed, they say: ‘What is your name?’ That most beautiful rich one, she says this. And the dark one who is only a voice, she says: ‘Do you like the opera?’ She asks this. And who is she? I know that voice. I have heard it before. It is very familiar, yet I cannot recall it. If she is here again I shall see her face.”
Having thus worked herself into a state of deep perplexity that rapidly ripened into fear, she glided, once her duties were done, down a narrow aisle, across the end of the stage where a score of stage hands were busy shifting scenes, then along a narrow passage-way, with which, as you will know from reading The Golden Circle, she was thoroughly familiar. From this passageway she emerged upon a second and narrower stage.
This was the stage of the Civic Theatre. The stage was dark. The house was dark. Only the faintest gleam of light revealed seats like ghosts ranged row on row.
How familiar it all seemed to her. The time had been when, not many months back, she had stood upon that stage and by the aid of her God-given gift, had stirred the audience to admiration, to laughter and to tears.
As she stood there now a wave of feeling came over her that she could not resist. This stage, this little playhouse had become to her what home means to many. The people who had haunted those seats were her people. They had loved her. She had loved them. But now they were gone. The house was dark, the light opera troop was scattered. She thought she knew how a mother robin must feel as she visits her nest long after the fledglings have flown.