“What made you cry?” she asked, when she had settled the boy and the girl beside her at the tea table in her schoolroom.

“I ’Twere the cold,” Daisy explained. “We’ve only got the kitchen fire, and the others don’t let him come near that.”

“What others?” asked Dolores, involuntarily looking across the room at the fire blazing on the hearth.

“Lord, the misses ’as got four kids of her own. There ain’t much room for Jim.”

“Why does she have him, then?” questioned Dolores.

“’Coz she knows I wouldn’t stay without ’im, an’ then oo’d do all the work in the ’ouse?”

Dolores said nothing, and the three began their tea. Daisy and Jim ate silently, the absorption of unaccustomed buns and cakes commanding all their attention. When Dolores watched them her eyes, always so grave, grew tragic. She looked white and intent, and her face had a strained expression, as though she were trying to hear some one speak, yet there was perfect silence in the room.

It was also in her ninth year that Dolores was taken by her dancing teacher to a theatre, where she danced before the actor-manager who was producing a new piece. She was engaged as a star dancer, at a high price.

Her adopted mother protested at first, saying that she would always provide for Dolores, and that there was no need for herto dance. But Dolores pleaded so earnestly that at last she yielded.

One engagement led to another, each more remunerative than the last. The genius of movement burned like a flame in those twinkling feet and in the rounded hands up-held like a votive cup, and Dolores in her silken draperies was like a young goddess with pinions at her heels. But she was always grave.

Dolores danced for nine years before the public.

On her eighteenth birthday she came to her adopted mother, and her sombre mood had fled, her eyes were bright and laughing.

“I’ve done with dancing,” she said.

“Done with it? But I thought you liked it!”