Page:A Leaf in the Storm.djvu/134

 which the rains had dropped, but which also had been so easily taken down, folded up, and borne whithersoever one would, where the life of the hour might promise the best.

I had been a country stroller always. I knew nothing of the great city: the streets seemed to pen me in a prison, and the sea of gas to suffocate me. But, still, I was making money: I was making also—in a minor way, indeed, but still surely—a histrionic repute. I had ambition,—for her,—and so, when I drank a pint of red wine, I still pledged, with firm heart, my future.

She was so well content too.

We had a little bright rose-and-white room, gilded like a sweetmeat-box, set very high under the glittering zinc roof of a house of many stories, shut in a narrow passage-way amongst many other buildings, close against the theatre.

It was terribly dear, and no bigger than a hazelnut, and hot and stifling always, being so near the roof.

But she thought it a paradise—a paradise, because above the stove there was a mirror, and opposite in the street, far down below, there was a busy café that was thronged the whole day long; and beneath, on the ground-floor, was a great magazine of laces and shawls and such-like fineries,