It was with a light tread that Petite Jeanne’s nimble feet carried her up the seven flights of stairs leading to the studio of a young playwright named Angelo. It appeared incredible that this young Italian who tried to write plays and had known no success, and a white-haired wanderer who had danced his way from one small city to another across the country, could accomplish great things in mending her fortune and in setting her once more before the gleaming footlights of some great theatre. Yet so perfect was her faith in this, her lucky day, that nothing seemed too much to expect, even from so humble a beginning. For, you see, Petite Jeanne believed in miracles, in angels, fairies, goblins, ghosts and all the rest. She was French. And French people, you must know, are that way. For you surely have read how the great Joan of Arc, as a child, often spent many hours watching the fairies play beneath her favorite tree.
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“It must be a terribly dingy place,” Florence Huyler, her companion and bodyguard, said in a low tone as they approached the final landing. “This is a fearfully old building and we are right beneath the eaves.”

She was right. They were beneath the eaves. She was mistaken, too; more mistaken than she could have guessed. The place they entered was large, but not dingy. It was far from that. Besides being an ambitious young writer, Angelo was an artist. He had taken this barn-like attic and had created here a small paradise.

Having attended a sale at which the stage settings of a defunct play were being sold, he had bid in at an astonishingly low sum all the pieces he desired. The result was surprising. While one end of his attic studio contained the accustomed desk and chair of a writer, the other end was equipped as a stage.
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And what a charming stage it was! Angelo was a genius. With a brush and bright colors he had transformed the dingiest of drops, wings and stage furniture into a vision of life and beauty.

“Oh! Oh!” cried Jeanne as she entered the room. “Once more I am on the stage!”

With one wild fling she went floating like a golden butterfly across the narrow stage.

Catching the spirit of the moment, the aged actor, who had been sitting in the corner, sprang to his feet and joined her in an impromptu dance that was as unique as it was charming.

“Bravo! Bravo!” Angelo shouted, quite beside himself with joy. “That dance alone would make any play. But there shall be others. Many others.”

“And this,” exclaimed Petite Jeanne, breaking in upon his ecstasy to spring int............