dulled the edge of its chic). Mrs. Sigourney, wicked and painted, played the rôle of Sin, a fascinating and indispensable part, just as Mrs. Champion and her virgins as Virtue, Purity and Chastity, were her foil; and Mrs. Mallinson and Lorna Vale were the Muses of Literature and the Drama. Others stood for Family, and Wealth and what-not, while Mrs. Callendar, hidden behind the drooping lids of her near-sighted green eyes, understood all this and pulled the strings. She made for the piece an admirable showman.
Ellen, watching them, grew excited, and out of this excitement there emerged slowly a new ambition, which had nothing to do with a career in music. It was, rather, a passionate desire to conquer this world as well, so that she might fling her triumph back into the world of the Town; it would serve as an admirable weapon to flaunt in the faces of those who had mocked her poverty. For she had not yet escaped the Town; she had not even learned how difficult it would be ever to escape.
The Russian tenor was a dismal failure. Save for the fact that he was Russian and therefore wildly exotic, he would have been impossible, for he sang in a bleating voice a popular ballad or two by Tosti and a dreary bit of folk music, still half-caught in the mists of slumber. In the back of the room, seated against the wall so that the figures of the other guests rose in silhouette between them and the lights of the low stage, Richard Callendar and the ugly Sabine sat like naughty children, jeering. They were bored by such spectacles; they were interested only in the individuals which comprised it. They saw that the others were a little restless.
And then there was a brief hush broken presently by the music of the Tzigane orchestra augmented by drums and clarinets, rising slowly at first and then breaking into a crescendo of Arab music, filled with insinuating and sensual rhythms, accentuated by the beating of a tom-tom, and from behind the lacquered screen there arose a faint tinkling sound like the music of a million tiny
