"ONE OF US"


At the first glance one might have been inclined to doubt; but at
the second anybody would have recognized her--that is, with a little
mental rehabilitation: the bright little rouge spots in the hollow of
her cheek, the eyebrows well accentuated with paint, the thin lips
rose-tinted, and the dull, straight hair frizzed and curled and
twisted and turned by that consummate rascal and artist, the official
beautifier and rectifier of stage humanity, Robert, the opera
_coiffeur_. Who in the world knows better than he the gulf between
the real and the ideal, the limitations between the natural and the
romantic?

Yes, one could see her, in that time-honored thin silk dress of hers
stiffened into brocade by buckram underneath; the high, low-necked
waist, hiding any evidences of breast, if there were such evidences to
hide, and bringing the long neck into such faulty prominence; and the
sleeves, crisp puffs of tulle divided by bands of red velvet, through
which the poor lean arm runs like a wire, stringing them together like
beads. Yes, it was she, the whilom _dugazon_ of the opera troupe.
Not that she ever was a _dugazon_, but that was what her voice once
aspired to be: a _dugazon manquée_ would better describe her.

What a ghost! But they always appeared like mere evaporations of
real women. For what woman of flesh and blood can seriously maintain
through life the rôle of sham attendant on sham sensations, and play
public celebrant of other women's loves and lovers, singing, or rather