encouragement and two glasses of mellow wine whose name he did not know,
Wallie did not become fatuous. They talked about music--neither of them
knew anything about it, really. Wallie confessed that he used it as an
intoxicant and a stimulant.

"That's it!" cried Hahn, excitedly. "If I could play I'd have done more.
More."

"Why don't you get one of those piano-players, What-you-call'ems?" Then,
immediately, "No, of course not."

"Nah, that doesn't do it," said Hahn, quickly. "That's like adopting a
baby when you can't have one of your own. It isn't the same. It isn't
the same. It looks like a baby, and acts like a baby, and sounds like a
baby--but it isn't yours. It isn't you. That's it! It isn't you!"

"Yeh," agreed Wallie, nodding. So perfectly did they understand each
other, this ill-assorted pair.

It was midnight before Wallie left. They had both forgotten about the
play manuscript whose delivery had been considered so important. The big
room was gracious, quiet, soothing. A fire flickered in the grate. One
lamp glowed softly--almost sombrely.

As Wallie rose at last to go he shook himself slightly like one coming
out of a trance. He looked slowly about the golden, mellow room. "Gee!"

"Yes, but it isn't worth it," said Hahn, "after you've got it."

"That's what they all say"--grimly--"_after_ they've got it."

The thing that had been born in Sid Hahn's mind thirty years before was
now so plainly stamped on this boy's face that Hahn was startled into
earnestness. "But I tell you, it's true! It's true!"

"Maybe. Some day, when I'm living in a place like this, I'll let you
know if you're right."

In less than a year Wallie Ascher was working with Hahn. No one knew his
official title or place. But "Ask Wallie. He'll know," had become a sort
of slogan in the office. He did know. At twenty-one his knowledge of the
theatre was infallible (this does not include plays unproduced; in this
no one is infallible) and his feeling for it amounted to a sixth sense.
There was something uncanny about the way he could talk about Lottie,
for example, as if he had seen her; or Mrs. Siddons; or Mrs. Fiske when
she was Minnie Maddern, the soubrette. It was as though he had the power
to cast himself back into the past. No doubt it was that power which
gave later to his group of historical plays (written by him between the
ages of thirty and thirty-five) their convincingness and authority.

When Wallie was about twenty-thre