Anna Alice Chapin

“ And rehearsing all day and being scolded by the stage manager wasn't any worse than hanging out clothes in the sun, and being scolded by my stepmother! When I had on my Oriental costume, and got on the stage, with a big green-and-gilt god on one side, and a lot of pink paper cherry blossoms and some girls with funny stringed instruments on the other; with all those queer lights, and the thumpy, Eastern music—well, it was like heaven, that's all! Sometimes I'd hardly wake up till the performance was over. ”

“ Pippa knew of him, and had a shrewd notion that he was very far from being the fairy prince of little Phyllis Grant's dreams. A rather selfish, material, young-old man, whose potentialities for spiritual or mental development had been smothered for all time by prosperity and adulation—this was the Basil Coverley that she had heard described by men and women who knew him. Yet Phyllis thought him a fairy prince! ”

“ When I went on the stage, it was because of the beauty it brought into my life.”
“Beauty! The theater?”
“Yes—oh, yes! There people can pretend beautiful things anyway. They can wear lovely clothes, and have nice, dainty things about them for a few hours a day, even if it is all nothing but a play. Can't you see?”
“I can see that you are a very wonderful little person,” said Pippa gently. “Won't you go on?”
Phyllis smiled at her in vague bewilderment; then continued, pouring out her heart:
“Why, I was an 'extra girl' once in a production with an Oriental setting. ”

“ Philippa knew well that the last sentence referred to something more than the loss of the position.
“Naturally,” the girl went on, “my engagement to Mr. Coverley is broken, also. You are—you are a very wicked woman. I thought any one as beautiful as you must be high and good; but you are wicked.”
Then she went quietly out of the room, and Pippa Carpenter broke down and cried as if her heart would break.
After a time, she went to her desk and wrote a very brief note to Basil Coverley. ”

“ He was, it appeared, handsome, brilliant, chivalrous, charming; the kindest, the best, the most gallant of men, a sort of demigod who had stooped from his exalted place to—wasn't it wonderful?—actually to fall in love with a poor little actress who spoke just two lines in his new play! ”

“ Maybe you haven't dreamed a lot; maybe you haven't had to, I mean?' Her eyes met Pippa's eagerly. “Maybe you've lived all the lovely things, and didn't need to dream them?”
Pippa did not answer, for the memory of her own lost dreams choked her. The girl went on:
“Everything with me has just been pretending. Do you remember 'Sara Crewe'? Well, my childhood was a little bit like that—hard work, and ugly things to look at, and ugly clothes to wear. There was a brown calico thing——” She shuddered. “But never mind about that! Even the food was ugly. ”