“To think of any one from Montana being here to-night! Staying very long, Mr. Blair?” Between each sentence she directed Higgins, who was getting her into her bodice. “And how do you like _Mandalay_? Isn’t it great?”
She addressed herself to Dan, but she smiled on both the men with extreme brilliance.
“You bet your life,” he responded. “I should think it was great.”
Poniotowsky rose indolently. He had not looked toward the new-comer, but had, on the other hand, followed every detail of Miss Lane’s dressing.
“Better take your scarf, Letty. Hand it to Miss Lane,” he directed Higgins. “It is so damned drafty in these beastly wings.”
He drew his watch out, gathered up his long coat, flung it over his arm and picked up his opera hat which lay folded on Letty Lane’s dressing-table.
The call page for the third time summoned “Miss La—ne, Miss La—ane,” and she took the scarf Higgins handed her and ran it through her hands, still beaming on Dan.
“Come in to see me at the Savoy on any day at two-thirty except on matinée days.”
“Put on your scarf.” Poniotowsky, taking it from her hands, laid it across her white shoulders, and she passed out between the two men, light as a bird, smiling, nodding, followed by the prince and the boy from Montana. The crowds began to fill the lately empty wings—dancers, chorus girls with their rustling gowns. Letty Lane said to Dan:
“Guess you’ll like my solo in this act all right—it’s the best thing in _Mandalay_. Now go along, and clap me hard.”
It gave him a new pleasure, for she had spoken to him in real American fashion with the swift mimicry that showed her talent. Dan went slowly back to his party. As he took his seat by the duchess she said to him:
“You went out to see Letty Lane. Do you know her?”
“Know her!” And as Dan answered, the sound of his own voice was queer to him, and his face flushed hotly. “Lord, yes. She used to be in the drug store in Blairtown. Sold soda-water to me when we were both kids. Whoever would have thought that she had that in her!” He nodded toward the stage, for Letty Lane had come on. “She sang in our church, too, but not for long.”
“Who was with her in her dressing-room?” the duchess asked. Blair didn’t answer. He was looking at Letty Lane. She had come to dance for the rajah and in her arms she held four white doves; each dove had a coral thread around its throat. It was a number that made her famous, _The Dove Song_. Set free, the birds flew about her, circling her blond head, surmounted by the small coral-colored cap. The doves settled on her shoulders, pecked at her lips.