"The Zingara" had run its course and given place to "The Gray Lady,"
which had not pleased the public. The papers said the leading role did
not show Miss Lopez off to the greatest advantage and the audiences
thinned, for Miss Lopez had transformed the Albion from a house of light
opera to a temple enshrining a star. The management, grumbling over their
mistake, laid about for something that would give the star a chance to
exhibit those qualities which had deflected so many dollars from the
"Eastern attractions" to their own box office.

Charlie Crowder and Mark Burrage, walking together in the early night,
turned into the Albion to have a look at the house and see Pancha in the
last act. They stood in the back, surveying the rows of heads in a dark
level, against the glaring picture of the stage, upon which, picked out
by the spotlight, Pancha stood singing her final solo. Crowder's eye
dropped from the solitary central figure to the audience and noted gaps
in the lines, unusual in the Albion and predicting "The Gray Lady's"
speedy demise. As the curtain fell he told Mark he was "going behind" for
a word with his friend, she would need cheering up, and Mark, nodding,
said he'd move along, he had work to do at home.

The floor of heads broke as though upheaved by an earthquake, and the
house rose, rustling and murmurous, and began crowding into the aisles.
The young man, leaning against the rail behind the last row, watched it,
a dense, coagulated mass, animated by a single impulse and moving as a
unit. Crowding up the aisle it looked like a thick dark serpent,
uncoiling its slow length, writhing toward the exit, the faces turned
toward him a pattern of pale dots on its back. Among them at first
unnoticed by his vaguely roving glance were three he knew--the two Alston
girls and Aunt Ellen.