To return to the evening in question.

"It's the ghost!" little Jammes had cried.

An agonizing silence now reigned in the dressing-room. Nothing was

heard but the hard breathing of the girls. At last, Jammes, flinging

herself upon the farthest corner of the wall, with every mark of real

terror on her face, whispered: "Listen!"

Everybody seemed to hear a rustling outside the door. There was no

sound of footsteps. It was like light silk sliding over the panel.

Then it stopped.

Sorelli tried to show more pluck than the others. She went up to the

door and, in a quavering voice, asked: "Who's there?"

But nobody answered. Then feeling all eyes upon her, watching her last

movement, she made an effort to show courage, and said very loudly: "Is there any one behind the door?"

"Oh, yes, yes! Of course there is!" cried that little dried plum of a

Meg Giry, heroically holding Sorelli back by her gauze skirt.

"Whatever you do, don't open the door! Oh, Lord, don't open the door!"

But Sorelli, armed with a dagger that never left her, turned the key

and drew back the door, while the ballet-girls retreated to the inner

dressing-room and Meg Giry sighed: "Mother! Mother!"

Sorelli looked into the passage bravely. It was empty; a gas-flame, in

its glass prison, cast a red and suspicious light into the surrounding

darkness, without succeeding in dispelling it. And the dancer slammed

the door again, with a deep sigh.

"No," she said, "there is no one there."

"Still, we saw him!" Jammes declared, returning with timid little

steps to her place beside Sorelli. "He must be somewhere prowling

about. I shan't go back to dress. We had better all go down to the

foyer together, at once, for the 'speech,' and we will come up again

together."

And the child reverently touched the little coral finger-ring which she

wore as a charm against bad luck, while Sorelli, stealthily, with the

tip of her pink right thumb-nail, made a St. Andrew's cross on the

wooden ring which adorned the fourth finger of her left hand. She said

to the little ballet-girls: "Come, children, pull yourselves together! I dare say no one has ever

seen the ghost."

"Yes, yes, we saw him--we saw him just now!" cried the girls. "He had

his death's head and his dress-coat, just as when he appeared to Joseph

Buquet!"

"And Gabriel saw him too!" said Jammes. "Only yesterday! Yesterday

afternoon--in broad day-light----"

"Gabriel, the chorus-master?"

"Why, yes, didn't you know?"

"And he was wearing his dress-clothes, in broad daylight?"

"Who? Gabriel?"

"Why, no, the ghost!"

"Certainly! Gabriel told me so himself. That's what he knew him by.

Gabriel was in the stage-manager's office. Suddenly the door opened

and the Persian entered. You know the Persian has the evil eye----"




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