'Bring some beer, Bob!' Schreiermeyer called out over his shoulder to
some one in the distance.

'Yes, sir,' answered a rough voice, far off, and with a foreign
accent.

The three entered the Primadonna's dressing-room together. It was a
hideous place, as all dressing-rooms are which are never used two days
in succession by the same actress or singer; very different from
the pretty cells in the beehive of the Comédie Française where each
pensioner or shareholder is lodged like a queen bee by herself, for
years at a time.

The walls of Cordova's dressing-room were more or less white-washed
where the plaster had not been damaged. There was a dingy full-length
mirror, a shabby toilet-table; there were a few crazy chairs, the
wretched furniture which is generally to be found in actresses'
dressing-rooms, notwithstanding the marvellous descriptions invented
by romancers. But there was light in abundance and to excess,
dazzling, unshaded, intolerable to any but theatrical eyes. There were
at least twenty strong electric lamps in the miserable place, which
illuminated the coarsely painted faces of the Primadonna and the tenor
with alarming distinctness, and gleamed on Schreiermeyer's smooth fair
hair and beard, and impassive features.

'You'll have two columns and a portrait in every paper to-morrow,' he
observed thoughtfully. 'It's worth while to engage such people. Oh
yes, damn it, I tell you it's worth while!'

The last emphatic sentence was intended for Stromboli, as if he had