outfit, embedding therein the precious gift. Noiselessly, she shut the
lid of her trunk, corded it, shouldered it, stole down the stairs with
it. Outside--how that chain had grated! and her shoulder, how it was
aching!--she soon found a cab. She took a night's sanctuary in some
railway-hotel. Next day, she moved into a small room in a lodging-
house off the Edgware Road, and there for a whole week she was
sedulous in the practice of her tricks. Then she inscribed her name on
the books of a "Juvenile Party Entertainments Agency."

The Christmas holidays were at hand, and before long she got an
engagement. It was a great evening for her. Her repertory was, it must
be confessed, old and obvious; but the children, in deference to their
hostess, pretended not to know how the tricks were done, and assumed
their prettiest airs of wonder and delight. One of them even pretended
to be frightened, and was led howling from the room. In fact, the
whole thing went off splendidly. The hostess was charmed, and told
Zuleika that a glass of lemonade would be served to her in the hall.
Other engagements soon followed. Zuleika was very, very happy. I
cannot claim for her that she had a genuine passion for her art. The
true conjurer finds his guerdon in the consciousness of work done
perfectly and for its own sake. Lucre and applause are not necessary
to him. If he were set down, with the materials of his art, on a
desert island, he would yet be quite happy. He would not cease to
produce the barber's-pole from his mouth. To the indifferent winds he
would still speak his patter, and even in the last throes of
starvation would not eat his live rabbit or his gold-fish. Zuleika, on
a desert island, would have spent most of her time in looking for a
man's foot-print. She was, indeed, far too human a creature to care
much for art. I do not say that she took her work lightly. She thought
she had genius, and she liked to be told that this was so. But mainly