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in an adjoining room, had pushed the candles nearer both sides of the mirror, had leaned forward over the jumbled palette of already uncapped jars and vials of makeup for a closer scrutiny of that all too familiar mask, her real face, the actress’s under-face, when behind her the door seemed to break open and in front of her, sharing the mirror, hurtling toward her, she saw her august rival’s reddened, baleful face shouting the absurd insult, threw herself back in her chair, turned, glimpsed the arm descending just before an involuntary grimace of her own brought down her eyelids at the same instant it bared her upper teeth and shortened her nose, and felt the shove and sting of a large beringed hand against her face.
    It all happened so rapidly and noisily—her eyes stayed closed, the door banged shut—and the shadow-flecked room with its hissing gas jets had gone so silent now, it might have been a bad dream: she’d been having bad dreams. Maryna clapped her palm to her offended face.
    â€œZofia? Zofia!”
    Sound of the door being opened softly. And some anxious babble from Bogdan. “What the devil did she want? If I hadn’t been down the corridor with Jan, I would have stopped her, how dare she burst in on you like that!”
    â€œIt’s nothing,” Maryna said, opening her eyes, dropping her hand. “Nothing.” Meaning: the buzz of pain in her cheek. And the migraine now looming on the other side of her head, which she intended to keep at bay by a much-practiced exercise of will until the end of the evening. She bent forward to tie her hair in a towel, then stood and moved to the washstand, where she vigorously soaped and scrubbed her face and neck, and patted the skin dry with a soft cloth.
    â€œI knew all along she wouldn’t—”
    â€œIt’s all right,” said Maryna. Not to him. To Zofia, hesitating at the half-open door, holding the costume aloft in her outstretched arms.
    Waving her in, Bogdan shut the door a bit harder than he intended. Maryna stepped out of her robe and into the burgundy gown with gold braiding (“No, no, leave the back unbuttoned!”), rotated slowly once, twice, before the cheval glass, nodded to herself, sent Zofia away to repair the loose buckle on her shoe and heat the curling iron, then sat at the dressing table again.
    â€œWhat did Gabriela want?”
    â€œNothing.”
    â€œMaryna!”
    She took a tuft of down and spread a thick layer of Pearl Powder on her face and throat.
    â€œShe came by to wish me the best for tonight.”
    â€œReally?”
    â€œQuite generous of her, wouldn’t you agree, since she’d thought the role was to be hers.”
    â€œVery generous,” he said. And, he thought, very unlike Gabriela.
    He watched as three times she redid the powder, applied the rouge with a hare’s foot well up on her cheekbones and under her eyes and on her chin, and blackened her eyelids, and three times took it all off with a sponge.
    â€œMaryna?”
    â€œSometimes I think there’s no point to any of this,” she said tonelessly, starting again on her eyelids with the charcoal stick.
    â€œThis?”
    She dipped a fine camel’s-hair brush into the dish of burnt umber and traced a line under her lower eyelashes.
    It seemed to Bogdan she was using too much kohl, which made her beautiful eyes look sorrowful, or merely old. “Maryna, look at me!”
    â€œDear Bogdan, I’m not going to look at you.” She was dabbing more kohl on her brows. “And you’re not going to listen to me. You should be inured by now to my attacks of nerves. Actor’s nerves. A little worse than usual, but this is a first night. Don’t pay any attention to me.”
    As if that were possible! He bent over and touched his lips to the nape of her neck. “Maryna…”
    â€œWhat?”
    â€œYou remember that I’ve taken the room at the Saski for a