Before retiring that night Florence and Petite Jeanne sat for a long time in their own small room, discussing the past and future.

They had spent the earlier hours of the evening in Angelo’s studio. There, in frankness and utter sincerity, the little company had discussed its prospects.

No one blamed Petite Jeanne for the part she had played. Being endowed with tender and kindly souls, they one and all felt that under the same conditions they would have acted in an identical manner.

“It is of little consequence,” Angelo had declared magnanimously. “We should never have succeeded under that management. The opera was doomed. And once a failure always a failure in the realm of playland.”
195

“What does it matter?” Dan Baker’s kindly old eyes had lighted with a smile. “You have youth and love and beauty, all of you. How can you ask for more?”

This speech had seemed quite wonderful at the time. But to these girls sitting on their bed, facing facts, the future did not seem rosy. With only two weeks’ room rent paid, with less than ten dollars between them, with no income save Florence’s meager pay, and with bleak old winter close at hand, they could not but dread what lay ahead.

“Jeanne,” Florence said at last, as if to change the subject, “was the gypsy who chased you, on that morning when you fell into Merry’s cellar, among those you saw at the Forest Preserve?”

“No,” the little French girl said thoughtfully. “No, I am sure he was not.”

“Then,” said her companion, “we had better put his Majesty, the little God of Fire, back to rest in his hole in the floor. You may need him yet.”
196

“I am sure we shall.” The little French girl’s tone carried assurance. “That opera is beautiful, very, very beautiful. And what is it the poet says?

“‘A thing of beauty is a joy forever.’

“And still another:

“‘All that is at all

Lasts forever, past recall.’

“If these things are true, how can our beautiful opera fail to live? Believe me, our time will yet come.

“Yes, yes, we must hide the little Fire God very carefully indeed.”

Three weeks passed. Trying weeks they were to the little French girl; weeks in which her faith and courage were severely tested.

As proof of her faith in the beautiful thing Angelo and Swen had created, she kept up her dancing. Sometimes in Angelo’s studio, sometimes in her own small room, sometimes humming snatches of the score, sometimes with Swen beating the battered piano, she danced tirelessly on. There were times, too, when those hardy souls who went to walk in the park on these bleak days saw a golden haired sprite dancing in the sun. This, too, was Jeanne.
197

But when winter came sweeping down, when on one memorable November day she awoke and found the window ledge piled high with snow and heard the shriek of a wind that, whirling and eddying outside, seemed never to pause, she despaired a little.

“This American winter,” she murmured. “It is terrible.”