* * * * *

The only thing I allowed the elocution teacher and directress to do was to put on my make-up for me ... including the sticking to my face of a close Van Dyke beard....

I refused to avail myself of her instruction for acting, as I perceived that was all bosh....

* * * * *

The curtain went up, I sitting there, the orchestra softly breathing Massenet’s Elegy—­meant to be the music sent from the spirit world, the melody that I, Iistral, heard, whenever my dead mistress was present....

The orchestra finished the melody.  It stopped and left the house in expectancy.

A mistake had been made on the entrance-cue of little Lisel, my child-nephew.

There I sat, in my strange robe, like a bath-robe, with stars cast over it, waiting.

I knew something had gone wrong.

Several girls (of course everyone in the audience knew me) began to titter at my strange appearance, in my apotheosised bathrobe, in my close Van Dyke beard....

I knew inwardly that in a moment all the house would be laughing ... at first out of sheer nervousness over the delay in the progress of the play—­then from genuine amusement....

I threw my will, my entire spirit, against the incoming tide of ridicule which would wreck the play even with the rising of the curtain.

I pictured to myself the beautiful woman who had drowned herself; I burned with her unhappiness ...  I felt her hovering near me ...  I thought of the lovely passion we had known together ...  I was Iistral.

I was not on a stage, but in a room, holding actual and rapt communion with my spirit-bride, Egeria!...

“Egeria!  Egeria!” I sobbed ... and tears streamed down my face.

I was miserable, without her, in the flesh ... though she was there, beside me, in soul!

* * * * *

I was aware of the audience again.  I was proud and strong in my confidence now.  The tittering had stopped.  The house was filling with awe.  I was pushing something back, back, back—­over the footlights.  I did not stop pushing till it had reached the topmost galleries....

I had them....

The applause after the first act was wonderful.

“Great!  You’re great ... you’ve vindicated my belief in you entirely!” Dineen was shouting, as he clapped me on the back, beside himself.

“Oh, I knew I’d do it!...  I want a drink!”

“Here’s some grape juice!” Gertie Black hold out a glass to me....

“No, I won’t drink that stuff,” I replied, with all the petulance and ill-humour traditionally allowed a star.

A Sig-Kapp, whom I had got into the play as a supe, slipped me a drink of real booze....

* * * * *

I had to run to the toilet three times before the second act, I was so nervous and excited.