Then, on the evening of the nineteenth, came the final dress rehearsal on the stage of the pretty little hall that had been engaged for the performance of the operetta.
The dress rehearsal, like most of its kind, was, for every one, nothing but a nightmare of discord, discouragement, and disaster.

Everybody's nerves were on edge, everybody was sure the thing would be a "flat failure." The soprano sang off the key, the alto forgot to shriek "Beware, beware!" until it was so late there was nothing to beware of; the basso stepped on Billy's trailing frock and tore it; even the tenor, Arkwright himself, seemed to have lost every bit of vim from his acting.
The chorus sang "Oh, be joyful!" with dirge-like solemnity, and danced as if legs and feet were made of wood.

The lovers, after the fashion of amateur actors from time immemorial, "made love like sticks." Billy, when the dismal thing had dragged its way through the final note, sat "down front," crying softly in the semi-darkness while she was waiting for Alice Greggory to "run it through just once more" with a pair of tired-faced, fluffy-skirted fairies who could _not_ learn that a duet meant a _duet_--not two solos, independently hurried or retarded as one's fancy for the moment dictated.
To Billy, just then, life did not look to be even half worth the living.
Her head ached, her throat was going-to-be-sore, her shoe hurt, and her dress--the trailing frock that had been under the basso's foot--could not possibly be decently repaired before to-morrow night, she was sure.
Bad as these things were, however, they were only the intimate, immediate woes.

Beyond and around them lay others many others.

To be sure, Bertram and happiness were supposed to be somewhere in the dim and uncertain future; but between her and them lay all these other woes, chief of which was the unutterable tragedy of to-morrow night.
It was to be a failure, of course.