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and Jane, barely glancing in their direction, went slowly up the stairs. Elizabeth felt suddenly very tired. It wasn’t a physical tiredness but a tiredness in her heart, because Kurt had asked her to meet him and then hadn’t come.
    Maybe he left a message for me with one of the others, she thought, and started to hurry.
    The professional company lived in rooms on the second floor and the ten girl apprentices lived on the third floor. The male apprentices lived in a big dormitory room over the garage. Most of the paying girl apprentices had single or double rooms, but Elizabeth and Jane lived with two of the paying apprentices in a lopsided room under the eaves. The two paying apprentices had the large half and the big closet. Elizabeth and Jane had the small half and a curtained-off alcove for a closet.
    The door to their room was open and the lights were blazing. John Peter and Sophie Sherman, one of Elizabeth and Jane’s roommates, sat on Jane’s bed. Ditta Coates, a paying apprentice
who lived down the hall, sat sprawled across the bed of their other roommate, Bibi Towne. Ditta was a plain girl of about twenty-nine who taught dramatics at a boarding school. In the large half of the room, Ben, draped in a sheet, Jane’s blond hairpiece pinned to his dark hair, was doing the vial scene from Romeo and Juliet.
    â€œâ€˜Stay, Tybalt, stay!’” Ben cried, waving his long arms wildly as Elizabeth entered. “‘Romeo, I come! This do I drink to thee.’” Draining a paper container of coffee, he fell, all arms and legs, across one of the beds. Elizabeth and Jane joined in the applause.
    Ben laughed happily. “It’s certainly the vile scene, isn’t it?”
    â€œâ€˜O wonderful, wonderful, and most wonderful wonderful, and yet again wonderful, and after that, out of all hooping!’” Elizabeth said.
    Ben raised one of his dark, peaked eyebrows. “And what, may I ask, is that from?”
    Elizabeth grinned. “Celia, in As You Like It .”
    â€œBe careful of my hair,” Jane warned, as Ben reached up and began tousling the hairpiece that looked so incongruous against his dark locks, his eyes as alive and eager as a puppy’s.
    â€œNow I’m going to be Melisande.”
    â€œNot with my hair you aren’t,” Jane said. “Give it here.”
    â€œWhat a brute you are.” Ben reluctantly unpinned the hair. “What was your telephone call, Liz?”
    â€œIt was my Aunt Harriet and she’d gone to bed. I’ll have to call her tomorrow morning.”
    â€œBed at this time of night!” Ben cried, tossing Jane the hair.
“It’s the shank of the evening.” He took a brown paper bag off one of the bureaus. “I brought you a hot dog, Liz. It’s all covered with mustard and pickle the way you like it.”
    â€œBen, you’re an angel,” Elizabeth said, and pulled the hot dog, wrapped in innumerable paper napkins, out of the bag. “I’m going to have to eat this out the window or I’ll drip all over the room.” Bless Ben, she thought. He knows how I hate to sponge off people, but he always sees that I get fed.
    Sophie, who had hay fever and was always accompanied by Kleenex, threw her a box. “Here, Liz.”
    â€œThanks, Soph.” Elizabeth took a large bite of the hot dog, then asked with pretended casualness, “Any messages for me?”
    Ditta shook her head. “Not a thing.”
    Sophie said indifferently, “What did you expect?”
    But Ben turned to Elizabeth and said bluntly, “I saw Kurt Canitz going into the Ambassador with Sarah Courtmont.”
    For a minute Elizabeth looked at him furiously, then she turned away.
    â€œThat was mean, Ben,” Ditta said.
    â€œWell, it’s the truth.”
    Ditta rose, saying, “If I’m going to keep awake at any of the classes tomorrow morning, I’ve got to get my beauty rest. Good