“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 thumbnail, 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.”

“Yes, yes, we saw him⁠—we saw him just now!” cried the girls. “He had his death’s head and his dress-coat, just as when he appeared to Joseph Buquet!”