She liked the consciousness that unless she appeared at the Union Family
Theater at two-fifteen and at eight-fifteen she was breaking into the
continuity of a sequence of events in which she had her place.
She was already in the rush of assurance that followed her sense of
earning capacity, regarding the Union Family Theater merely as a means
to an end, and in spare time had registered at two concert bureaus, read
off the same building of plate-glass windows, and had purchased the
score of "Carmen," humming Michaela's aria, in bed of mornings. There
was a letter she had once obtained from Max Rinehardt, addressed:
"_To Whom It May Concern. Miss Lilly Becker has studied with me for a
period of three years. I consider her voice a lyric soprano of fine
quality._"
Evidently it concerned no one. The clerk at the concert bureau tossed it
aside without comment. Visigoth, when he read it one day in the wings,
returned it in just that manner.
She was secretly ashamed of her professional debut in a role that would
not have survived the ridicule of even Flora Bankhead's easy standards.
Many a time, together at matinees, they had giggled and munched
chocolates over acts that hardly rivaled hers for sentimental appeal of
about one dimension.
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