`And does the ghost really come there?'

`Yes.'

`Then somebody does come?'

`Why, no! The ghost comes, but there is nobody there.'

The little ballet-girls exchanged glances. If the ghost came to the box, he must be seen, because he wore a dress-coat and a death's head. This was what they tried to make Meg understand, but she replied:

`That's just it! The ghost is not seen. And he has no dress-coat and no head! All that talk about his death's head and his head of fire is nonsense! There's nothing in it. You only hear him when he is in the box. Mother has never seen him, but she has heard him. Mother knows, because she gives him his program.'

Sorelli interfered.

`Giry, child, you're getting at us!'

Thereupon little Giry began to cry.

`I ought to have held my tongue - if mother ever came to know! But I was quite right, Joseph Buquet had no business to talk of things that don't concern him - it will bring him bad luck - mother was saying so last night - - '

There was a sound of hurried and heavy footsteps in the passage and a breathless voice cried:

`Cecile! Cecile! Are you there?'

`It's mother's voice,' said Jammes. `What's the matter?'

She opened the door. A respectable lady, built on the lines of a Pomeranian grenadier, burst into the dressing-room and dropped groaning into a vacant arm-chair. Her eyes rolled madly in her brick-dust colored face.

`How awful!' she said. `How awful!'

`What? What?'

`Joseph Buquet

`What about him?'

`Joseph Buquet is dead!'

The room became filled with exclamations, with astonished outcries, with scared requests for explanations.

`Yes, he was found hanging in the third-floor cellar!'

`It's the ghost!' little Giry blurted, as though in spite of herself; but she at once corrected herself, with her hands pressed to her mouth: `No, no! - I, didn't say it! - I didn't say it! - - '

All around her, her panic-stricken companions repeated under their breaths:

`Yes - it must be the ghost!'