That old
man was wrong. You must understand--for her sake--it wasn't that."
"Of course it wasn't, Lilly." His voice drained off, as if from
exhaustion.
But for years, like a wound whose jagged lips were slow to close, the
memory of this night lay palpitating between them.
CHAPTER V
"The Web" was tried out in Baltimore the following April, Zoe, Ida
Blair, and Bruce Visigoth traveling down on the same train with the
company. It cost Lilly a pang for Zoe to miss the two days of school and
a vocal, a French, and a piano lesson, but the theater attracted Zoe
like the blithesome little moth she was. The duties of her High School
combined with the unrelenting tutelage of Treiste molded her young days
pretty rigidly to form, but more than once, during the rehearsals of
"The Web," Lilly, seated in the black maw of the auditorium, would turn
suddenly to the feel of her daughter's gaze burning like sun through
glass into the darkness. The company adopted her as a pet. The director
babied her. Once, as the afternoon rehearsal was disbanding, she crept
up through a box to the stage. The footlights were dark, but she came
down quite freely toward them, seeming to feel their mock blaze, and
sang a snatch or two from the tenderest _Lieder_ ever written, bits of
Schubert and Hugo Wolf, the company gathering in the wings to listen
and applaud.
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