“Play you must. I will not have you shrink, or frown, or make the prude. I read your skull that night you came; I see your moyens : play you can; play you must.”

“But how, M. Paul? What do you mean?”

“There is no time to be lost,” he went on, now speaking in French; “and let us thrust to the wall all reluctance, all excuses, all minauderies . You must take a part.”

“In the vaudeville?”

“In the vaudeville. You have said it.”

I gasped, horror-struck. What did the little man mean?