"You cannot offer her less than two hundred a week to begin," he said with the same air of being alone with Mr. Meier.
"No, oh, no, no, no, no!" sighed Mr. Meier, wiping his eyes.
He rose and bowed to Cake with the queerest respect, still wiping his eyes with the back of his thick, hairy hands. It was a striking commentary upon her years of training that both of these men, successful from long and hard experience, paid her the compliment of thinking her an old hand at the game.
"Mine is the Imperial Theatre, Miss," said Meier. "You should be there to-night by seven o'clock. It ain't necessary we should rehearse. No, oh, no, no, no, no! And now, perhaps"—he looked her up and down, oddly—"perhaps I can take you to your—hotel?"
Cake looked him back, serene in her belief in what the lodger had taught her.
"I'll be there at seven," she said. "No, thank you." She walked out and across into a small park where she sat until the appointed time.
Then she went to the stage entrance of the Imperial Theatre, presented the card Mr. Meier had given her, and entered. Once inside she was taken to a dressing room by a fat, comfortable, middle-aged woman who seemed to be waiting for her. After a very short and, to Cake, tranquil period, Mr. Meier bustled in.
"Of course, Miss, you know this is a Revue," he explained, rubbing his hands with a deference that Cake shed utterly, because she did not know it was there.
She nodded, accepting his statement. "We make 'em laugh here," said Mr. Meier. Again Cake nodded; she knew exactly as much about the show as she did before. "You close the second act; it's the best place for you. Leafy, here, will help you dress."
Cake sat still while Leafy dressed her, very hushed and still. The light blazed so near after all these hard, lean years of pursuit, years in which the little affairs of life, like the business of growing from a child to a woman, had simply passed her by. Of that Urge to be famous she was even more burningly aware; herself she did not know at all.