Florence had smiled, but had made no reply.
At this hour the great auditorium was silent, deserted. Only from behind the drawn stage curtain came a faint murmur, telling of last minute preparations.
"'The Magic Curtain.'" Jeanne whispered. The words still thrilled her. "It will be witnessed to-night by thousands. What will be the verdict? To-morrow Angelo and Swen, my friends of our 'Golden Circle,' will be rich or very, very poor."
"The Magic Curtain." Surely it had been given a generous amount of publicity. Catching a note of the unusual, the mysterious, the uncanny in this production, the reporters had made the most of it. An entire page of the Sunday supplement had been devoted to it. A crude drawing of the curtains, pictures of Hop Long Lee, of Angelo, Swen, Marjory Dean, and even Jeanne were there. And with these a most lurid story purporting to be the history of this curtain of fire as it had existed through the ages in some little known Buddhist temple. The very names of those who, wrapped in its consuming folds, had perished, were given in detail. Jeanne had read, had shuddered, then had tried to laugh it off as a reporter's tale. In this she did not quite succeed. For her the magic curtain contained more than a suggestion of terror.
She was thinking of all this when an attendant, hurrying up the orchestra aisle, paused beneath her and called her name, the only name by which she was known at the Opera House:
Without knowing why, she thrilled to her very finger tips. "Is it for this that I am here?" she asked herself.
"Hurry down!" came from below. "The director wishes to speak to you."
"The director!" The blood froze in her veins. So this was the end! Her masquerade had been discovered. She was to be thrown out of the Opera House.
"And on this night of all nights!" She was ready to weep.
It was a very meek Pierre who at last stood before the great director.
"Are you Pierre?" His tone was not harsh. She began to hope a little.
"This man--" The director turned to one in the shadows. Jeanne caught her breath. It was the great sculptor, Fernando Tiffin.
"This man," the director repeated, after she had recovered from her surprise, "tells me that you know the score of this new opera, 'The Magic Curtain.'"