"Whatever you do, don't open the door! Oh, Lord, don't open
the door!"
But Sorelli, armed with a dagger that never left her, turned the key
and drew back the door, while the ballet-girls retreated to the inner
dressing-room and Meg Giry sighed:
"Mother! Mother!"
Sorelli looked into the passage bravely. It was empty;
a gas-flame, in its glass prison, cast a red and suspicious light
into the surrounding darkness, without succeeding in dispelling it.
And the dancer slammed the door again, with a deep sigh.
"No," she said, "there is no one there."
"Still, we saw him!" Jammes declared, returning with timid little steps
to her place beside Sorelli. "He must be somewhere prowling about.
I shan't go back to dress. We had better all go down to the foyer
together, at once, for the `speech,' and we will come up again together."
And the child reverently touched the little coral finger-ring which
she wore as a charm against bad luck, while Sorelli, stealthily,
with the tip of her pink right thumb-nail, made a St. Andrew's cross
on the wooden ring which adorned the fourth finger of her left hand.
She said to the little ballet-girls:
"Come, children, pull yourselves together! I dare say no one has
ever seen the ghost.
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