"Dear child, I shall require you to read the part. Where is the piece?"

He turned to the desk and turned over some of the papers. At length he found what he was looking for.

"Here," he said. "You will read this. Just a few lines, that is all. The part is of a Fairy. It is the beginning of Act II. A Wood near Athens. You come in on one side. Puck on the other. He will say to you ..."He threw back his head and declaimed with dramatic emphasis:

How now, spirity whither wander you?

"Then ... here are your lines:

Over hill, over dale.

Thorough hush, thorough brier ...

"Read from there, my dear."

I took the paper and read until I came to the lines:

I must go seek some dewdrops here And hang a pearl in every cowslipss ear. Farewell, thou lob of spirits; Fll be gone: Our Queen and all her elves come here anon.

I was there. I had forgotten him temporarily. The words enchanted me. It was indeed a small part, but how I wanted to do it! I longed for the opportunity to say those words on the stage and give them the rendering such poetry deserved.

Charles Hart was swaying on his heels. Kitty was smiling triumphantly.

I was not surprised to hear the great man say: "It would appear that you have the part of Fairy in my kinsman's piece. You must learn your lines with all speed."

For the next days before the great occasion I practiced my lines continually. Kitty and Maggie helped me. At odd moments one of them would start up with "How nowy spirit! Whither wander you?'' and I would start up with ''Over hill, over dale,'' and go through the lines. Even Martha and Rose took it up, and ''Whither wander you?'' became a phrase constantly heard throughout the house.

I think the lines are engraved upon my mind and will be until I die.

The great day came. I cannot say that my performance was received with wild enthusiasm, but neither was I booed off the stage. It seemed that no sooner had I stepped on stage than I was off and that was the end of my brief glory. But I had made a start. I was a professional actress.

Those were happy days. Kitty was still playing in Rule a Wife and Have a Wife, and there was I, a Fairy in A Midsummer Night's Dream. We were indeed a theatrical household, and I was a part of it all, as I had not been before.

Sometimes I would complain that mine was such a little part.

"There'll be others," Kitty assured me. "Charles is pleased with you, I can tell. He watches you. He'll have something else for you and each part will be a little better than the one before. We shall soon have you complaining of the number of lines you have to learn."

"If only that could be so!"

"It will, I promise you." And with the coming of the new year, there were other parts. They were still small, but with each one I felt myself creeping nearer to success. Mine was not to be a spectacular rise, such as are dreamed of.

"Meteors do not last," soothed Kitty. "They fly across the sky, brilliant, admired, and then they fall to earth and are forgotten. You are doing it the best way, the gradual rise, and with each part you are a little more experienced."

I often thought how fortunate I had been to have fallen in with those two wonderful and loving women.

Kitty was particularly careful that I should be guarded against what she called the pitfalls of life, which meant the ever-prowling male.

"They come to the theater. They select those they want and they then tell you they will die if you deny them. You are the most wonderful creature that ever lived—until they have what they want, and then it is goodbye and they've forgotten who you were in a week or so. That's not the way. Keep them at bay."

"Lord Donnerton was not like that."

"There are few like him, I do assure you."

"Are you regretting?"

She shook her head. "The soft life was not for me. This is where I belong and what's best suited to me."

So we were happy, and I believed that life would go on like that forever.

The spring had come. It was warm and pleasant. I felt I was now a seasoned actress. I had a small part in Kilhgrew's Claracillay and one night, after the play, I was walking back to the house, which was but a short distance from the theater.

It was a warm and balmy night, and as I came through the cobbled alley which led to the square in which we lived I saw a woman lying on the pavement.

My first thought was that she had been robbed.

I went over to her to see if I could help.

"Are you all right?" I asked.

She did not answer.

Then she opened her eyes. I saw that she was flushed and she stared at me as though she did not understand what I said. She was obviously very ill.

As I stepped nearer to her, she shook her head at me violently, as though urging me not to approach.

"Go, lady," she murmured. "Do not stay near."

I did not move. I felt I must take some action, help her to her feet. If she could not walk, perhaps I could bring some friend or member of her family.

She was shaking her head, obviously frantically urging me not to come near.

Then suddenly she opened her blouse and on her breast I saw the ugly red spots.

I understood then why she did not want me to go near her.

I was aware that the plague had visited the villages near the city. There had been one or two outbreaks recently. Maggie and Kitty had talked of it.

I turned and left the woman, though I felt I should not have done so. However, she was so eager for me to keep away.

When I went home and told Maggie and Kitty of the incident they looked grave.

"There have been one or two cases this year," said Kitty. "There always have been," added Maggie, but I continued to wonder what had happened to that woman.

June had come. The weather was exceptionally hot, and before the month was out there was no doubt that the plague had come to London.

Many people were leaving the city and our audiences were becoming smaller every day.

"If it goes on like this," said Kitty, "we shall be playing to empty houses."

We did not do that because the theaters closed down. It was no longer profitable to stay open, for people did not congregate in numbers, for fear that among them might be someone who carried the dreaded infection.

We were fortunate in being able to rely on Maggie. She was, as she had said, comfortably off, and insisted that we share that comfort. She had stored cases of ale and flour to make bread should we need it, she said.

By the time August had come, we knew that this epidemic of the dreaded plague was different from the others which bad come to the city. During the first week of that August, four thousand people died, and the numbers were rising. The streets were quiet, for few people ventured out. London had lost that air of bustling activity which had been one of its main characteristics. It was strange to walk out into those quiet streets, which we did very rarely. Shops were closed, and only occasionally did one see another person, who would hurry past, glancing fearfully about, suspicious that anyone might soon be a plague victim who would pass on the infection to them—just as I was wondering the same about them.

Many of the houses were marked with a red cross on the door and with it the words "Lord have Mercy upon us." One avoided passing such houses, for the sign meant that within the house was someone suffering from the plague. The law was that if there was such a person in any house, that house must show the sign and none of the inmates could emerge for a month.

A terrible gloom hung over the city. At night the only sound was the bell of the pest cart as it came through the streets, followed by the dismal cry "Bring out your dead," and we knew that the dead body of some loved one would be put into the cart with others in the same state, to be taken outside the city, there to be thrown into a pit where many other victims of the dread disease already lay.

The King and the Parliament had moved to Oxford. London was a dead city and behind the walls of our house the five of us waited in fear for what would happen next.

It was the end of August. I heard later that during that week the death toll had risen to over seven thousand. I was glad I did not know it at the time. Even so, we were all aware of the horror of this fearsome plague. We had survived largely through Maggie's foresight. Food was not plentiful, but we managed on what she had got together in her wisdom. Shops were closed, and the stalls had long since disappeared. London was a city of gloom.

Kitty said to me: "Perhaps I should never have brought you here. You would be safer at this moment in the country."

"I wanted to come," I assured her, "and I have no regrets."

I could imagine my mother's reaction to what was happening. She would say it was God's vengeance for the wickedness of the great city. Then I thought of the poor woman I had seen dying in the cobbled alley, and the sound of the death cart trundling through the streets, and I knew that I would not wish to be there and to hear her continual condemnation. Indeed, I knew there would have been a certain gratification in what she would perceive as God's vengeance on the unrighteous.

"No," I went on, "I have had my little triumph, and I would not have been without that, whatever happens now."

"That comforts me a little," said Kitty. "You have always been on my conscience."

"When you see me as a great actress you will be pleased, Kitty, for one day it will happen."

"Oh, bless you," she said. "It is true that that will make me a very happy woman."

The next day, when she arose in the morning, she felt unwell.

As the morning progressed she said her head was aching and she felt hot although she was shivering with cold.

Maggie and I looked at each other and dared not say or even consider the thoughts which came to us. When anyone felt faintly unwell, we kept telling ourselves, we always had these uneasy feelings. It was nothing at all to be concerned about.

By the evening Kitty was worse.

Yesterday she had gone into the streets. She could not stay in any longer, she had said. She needed some fresh air and she would see if it were possible to buy food somewhere. Could it have been that she had picked up the dreaded infection somehow?

I scarcely slept that night and I knew it was the same with Maggie.

First thing in the morning, I went to Kitty's room. She was lying in bed. Terror beset me when she looked at me rather vaguely and said: "Oh ... it's Sarah, is it not?"

"Kitty!" I cried. "How are you? Are you better?" I was beseeching her to say yes.

She said: "It was cruel of me to leave you. I had made my vows. But I could not endure it."

Then the awful truth dawned on me. She was delirious. It was one of the symptoms ... headache, shivering, nausea, delirium.

She seemed herself suddenly. "Oh, I am better this morning, Sarah. I am a little tired. I think I'll rest awhile."

I drew the sheets about her. I felt sick with fear.

I went to Maggie and told her.

Maggie stared ahead, her face tense with anxiety which she was obviously trying to thrust aside, rather than accept what she feared.

"She's a strong girl," she said. "She went out yesterday. I wonder ..." She looked at me steadily. "If it is ..."

She was silent for a while.

"We get fearful sometimes without cause," she went on. "It cannot be. But if it is, Sarah, we must needs face it."

There was silence throughout the house. Kitty remained in her bed.

That afternoon I went to her. She was lying very still, her eyes wide open.

"Sarah," she said. "It has come. I fear I have brought it into the house. I must go while there is time."

"Go ... where would you go?"

"I would go into the streets, as so many have. They go there to die because they do not want to take the plague to their families.

It is what I must do. Give me my clothes. Help me to dress. I know I must go ... before it is too late."

"You shall go nowhere. Kitty. You shall stay here in your bed."

"Oh. God help me. no. I am afflicted, I know. Soon the dreaded signs will show themselves on my breast. I must go before that."

"We shall never let you do that, not I, nor Maggie. This is your home. You will stay here and we shall care for you."