By the time she had sealed and addressed the shrimpy envelope and begun feverishly to make up for lost time in changing her costume, the other girls had recovered a little from the suffocation of her glory. One of them murmured:
“Say, Aneet, what is your first name? Your really truly one.”
Another snarled, “What's your really truly last name?”
A third dryad whooped, “I bet it's Lizzie Smoots or Mag Wimpfhauser.”
The others had other suggestions to howl, and Anita cowered in silence, wondering if one of the fiends would not at any moment guess “Kedzie Thropp.”
The call to arms and legs cut short her torment, and for once the music seemed appropriate. Never had she danced with such lyricism.
Gilfoyle had the presence of mind to be waiting in the alley after the matinee, and took from her hand the note she was carrying to the mail-box. When he read it he almost embraced her right there.
They took a street-car to Mrs. Jambers's boarding-house, but cruel disappointment waited for them. Another boarder was entertaining her gentleman friend in the parlor. Kedzie was furious. So was the other boarder.
That night Gilfoyle met Kedzie again at the stage door, but they could not go to the boarding-house, for Mrs. Jambers occupied at that time a kind of false mantelpiece that turned out to be a bed in disguise. So they went to the Park.
Young Gilfoyle treated Kedzie with almost more respect than she might have desired. He was one of those self-chaperoning young men who spout anarchy and practise asceticism. Even in his poetry it was the necessitous limitations of rhyme-words that dragged him into his boldest thoughts.