Page:Elizabeth Jordan--Tales of the cloister.djvu/137

 had not been well for months—perhaps that was it.

Yet the longing for America remained. It was only a whim, of course, but her life was given up to the gratification of whims. Why not gratify this one? She decided that she would, and perhaps she might know again the gay indifference that alone made her life endurable.

The next day a delighted New York manager received a cable, and within a week the great dailies teemed with the news of "The Convent Girl's" approaching visit. It was a dull season, and the editors were glad to give much space to this subject. The Sunday editions devoted pages to the story of her career, illustrated with the photographs which were already on exhibition everywhere. Flaming posters placarded the city. The woman with "the wickedest eyes in Europe" had at last mercifully consented to turn them again upon her native land.

She had little time for reflection after her arrival. The reporters were on tiptoe for her, and her press agent was feverishly active. She granted interviews right and left, and sat for photographs, and wrote autographs, and attended a few rehearsals, and smiled disdainfully over the hundreds of letters that poured