What she had expected, poor child, to find in Piccadilly, she scarcely knew; but from infancy, the name had a sweet and mystic significance. It connoted beauty and grandeur; it was associated in her mind with silk and gold and marble. It was what a street in the New Jerusalem might have been had John of Patmos had the training of a star reporter. Poor Piccadilly! To the Englishman the most beauteous, the most seductive, the fullest of meaning of all the thoroughfares of the cities of the world, to the disillusioned girl it was only a dismal, clattering, shrieking ravine. Why had they lied to her? She could not understand.
The first evening she was overstrained, and went to bed early; but the next night they took her to see the play in which Herold was acting.
“I 'll bring her round between the acts,” said John to Herold, during a discussion of the adventure.
“You 'll do nothing of the sort,” said Herold.
“It will interest her tremendously to go behind.”
“And see all the tinsel and make-believe? What a fool you are, John!”
“Well, anyhow, we 'll come and see you in your dressing-room,” said John, who recognized some reason in his friend's objection. “We can get round without crossing the stage.”
Herold put his hands on John's great shoulders.
“My dear John,” said he, “I love my profession very dearly, but there's one thing in it which I loathe, and that is having to paint my face.”
He said no more; but John understood, though he thought it somewhat finicking of Herold to shrink from meeting Stella in his make-up. He had seen him talk thus to dames and damsels of the most exalted station without a shadow of false shame.