not that she was softer or gentler; rather it seemed that she was
more remote, something absent and thoughtful, with a touch of
raptness that lent the true air of inspiration to her acting. Her
spare time she spent with the baby--she and Marie, her maid, playing
with it, making a plaything of it, ministering to it, and obeying it.
It had never cried once since Truda had taken it in her arms, but
adapted itself with the soundest skill to its surroundings and
companions.

"I found it ten years too late," said Truda once.

Her maid looked at her curiously.

"It is surprising that Madame should not have found one before," she
said.

Those two days were placid and full of peace, quiet with the lull of
emptiness. But in them Truda did not forget. She was realizing
herself, and her capacity to deal with a situation that would not be
devised to show her talents. She felt that she stood, for the first
time, on the threshold of brisk, perilous, actual life, of that life
which was burlesqued, exaggerated, in the plays in which she acted.
It was expectancy that softened her eyes and lit her face with
dreams--expectancy and exhilaration.

She was about to be born into the world.

The summons came suddenly on the evening of the second day. Even as
she drove to the theatre, Truda had noted how the streets were
uneasy, how men stood about in groups and were in the first stages of