than well off without her profession, even when she had made her
_début_, and she had given up much to be a singer, believing that she
knew what she was doing.

But now she was ready to undo it all and to go back; at least she
thought she was, as she stared at herself in the glass while the pale
maid drew her hair back and fastened it far above her forehead with a
big curved comb, as a preliminary to getting rid of paint and powder.
At this stage of the operation the Primadonna was neither Cordova nor
Margaret Donne; there was something terrifying about the exaggeratedly
painted mask when the wig was gone and her natural hair was drawn
tightly back. She thought she was like a monstrous skinned rabbit with
staring brown eyes.

At first, with the inexperience of youth, she used to plunge her
painted face into soapsuds and scrub vigorously till her own
complexion appeared, a good deal overheated and temporarily shiny;
but before long she had yielded to Alphonsine's entreaties and
representations and had adopted the butter method, long familiar to
chimney-sweeps.

The butter lay ready; not in a lordly dish, but in a clean tin can
with a cover, of the kind workmen use for fetching beer, and commonly
called a 'growler' in New York, for some reason which escapes
etymologists.

Having got rid of the upper strata of white lace and fine linen,
artfully done up so as to tremble like aspen leaves with Lucia's mad
trills, Margaret proceeded to butter her face thoroughly. It occurred
to her just then that all the other artists who had appeared with her