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“Who’s the soldier boy?” he asked suddenly.

“Lieutenant Hamilton. He’s rather nice. Don’t you think so?”

“He’ll do to play with on the trip. You’ll soon lose him in London.”

The winter darkness closed down round them. Stewards were busy closing ports and windows with fitted cardboards. Through the night the ship would travel over the dangerous lanes of the sea with only her small port and starboard lights. A sense of exhilaration possessed Edith. This hurling forward over black water, this sense of danger, visualised by precautions, this going to something new and strange, set every nerve to jumping. She threw back her rug, and getting up went to the rail. Lethway, the manager, followed her.

“Nervous, aren’t you?”

“Not frightened, anyhow.”

It was then that he told her how he had sized the situation up. She was a hit or nothing.

“If you go all right,” he said, “you can have the town. London’s for you or against you, especially if you’re an American. If you go flat—-“

“Then what?”

She had not thought of that. What would she do then? Her salary was not to begin until the performances started. Her fare and expenses across were paid, but how about getting back? Even at the best her salary was small. That had been one of her attractions to Lethway.

“I’ll have to go home, of course,” she said. “If they don’t like me, and decide in a hurry, I–I may have to borrow money from you to get back.”

“Don’t worry about that.” He put a hand over hers as it lay on the rail, and when she made no effort to release it he bent down and kissed her warm fingers. “Don’t you worry about that,” he repeated.

She did worry, however. Down in her cabin, not so tidy as the boy’s–littered with her curiously anomalous belongings, a great bunch of violets in the wash bowl, a cheap toilet set, elaborate high-heeled shoes, and a plain muslin nightgown hanging to the door–down there she opened her trunk and got out her contract. There was nothing in it about getting back home.

For a few minutes she was panicky. Her hands shook as she put the document away. She knew life with all the lack of illusion of two years in the chorus. Even Lethway–not that she minded his casual caress on the deck. She had seen a lot of that. It meant nothing. Stage directors either bawled you out or petted you. That was part of the business.

But to-night, all day indeed, there had been something in Lethway’s face that worried her. And there were other things.

The women on the boat replied coldly to her friendly advances. She had spoken to a nice girl, her own age or thereabouts, and the girl’s mother or aunt or chaperon, whoever it was, had taken her away. It had puzzled her at the time. Now she knew. The crowd that had seen her off, from the Pretty Coquette Company–that had queered her, she decided. That and Lethway.

None of the girls had thought it odd that she should cross the ocean with Lethway. They had been envious, as a matter of fact. They had brought her gifts, the queer little sachets and fruit and boxes of candy that littered the room. In that half hour before sailing they had chattered about her, chorus unmistakably, from their smart, cheap little hats to their short skirts and fancy shoes. Her roommate, Mabel, had been the only one she had hated to leave. And Mabel had queered her, too, with her short-bobbed yellow hair.

She did a reckless thing that night, out of pure defiance. It was a winter voyage in wartime. The night before the women had gone down, sedately dressed, to dinner. The girl she had tried to speak to had worn a sweater. So Edith dressed for dinner.

She whitened her neck and arms with liquid powder, and slicked up her brown hair daringly smooth and flat. Then she put on her one evening dress, a black net, and pinned on her violets. She rouged her lips a bit too.