those who oppressed her. She had made it a vow in her lair one evening,
when in the next room she could hear the oaths of the man, and the cries
of her mother as he beat her, and her sister's sobs. How utterly
wretched she felt! And yet her vow had been some solace. She clenched
her teeth and thought:

"I will crush the lot of you."

In that dark childhood there had been one ray of light:

One day, one of the little grubby boys with whom she used to lark in the
gutter, the son of the stage-door keeper of the theater, got her in to
the rehearsal, although it was strictly forbidden. They stole to the
very back of the building in the darkness. She was gripped by the
mystery of the stage, gleaming in the darkness, and by the magnificent
and incomprehensible things that the actors were saying, and by the
queenly bearing of the actress,--who was, in fact, playing a queen in a
romantic melodrama. She was chilled by emotion: and at the same time her
heart thumped.... "That--that is what I must be some day!" ... Oh! if
she could ever be like that!...--When it was over she wanted at all
costs to see the evening performance. She let her companion go out, and
pretended to follow him: and then she turned back and hid herself in the
theater: she cowered away under a seat, and stayed there for three hours
without stirring, choked by the dust: and when the performance was about
to begin and the audience was arriving, just as she was creeping out of
her hiding-place, she had the mortification of being pounced on,
ignominiously expelled amid jeers and laughter, and taken home, where
she was whipped. She would have died that night had she not known now
what she must do later on to master these people and avenge herself on
them.