of rippling interest. At every third step somebody hailed
him, as a rule by his first name; generally he responded by a curt nod
and a tightening of his teeth upon his cigar.

They turned east through Forty-sixth Street, shouldered by a denser
rabble whose faces, all turned in one direction, shone livid with the
glare of a gigantic electric sign, midway down the block:

THEATRE MAX

SARA LAW'S
FAREWELL

It was nearly half-past eight; the house had been open since seven; and
still a queue ran from the gallery doors to Broadway, while still an
apparently interminable string of vehicles writhed from one corner to
the lobby entrance, paused to deposit its perishable freight, and
streaked away to Sixth Avenue. The lobby itself was crowded to
suffocation with an Occidental durbar of barbaric magnificence, the
city's supreme manifestation of its religion, the ultimate rite in the
worship of the pomps of the flesh.

"Look at that," Max grumbled through his cigar. "Ain't it a shame?"

"What?" Whitaker had to lift his voice to make it carry above the
buzzing of the throng.

"The money I'm losing," returned the manager, vividly disgusted. "I
could've filled the Metropolitan Opera House three times over!"

He swung on his heel and began to push his way out of the lobby. "Come
along--no use trying to get in this way."

Whitaker followed, to be led down a blind alley between the theatre and
the adjoining hotel. An illuminated sign advertised the stage door,
through which, _via_ a brief hallway, they entered the postscenium--a
vast, cavernous, cluttered, shadowy and draughty place, made visible for
the most part by an unnatural glow filtering from the footlights through
the canvas walls of an interior set. Whitaker caught hasty glimpses of
stage-hands idling about; heard a woman's voice declaiming loudly from
within the set; saw a middle-aged actor waiting for his cue beside a
substantial wooden door in the canvas walls; and--Max dragging him by
the arm--passed through a small door into the gangway behind the boxes.

"Curtain's just up," Max told him; "Sara doesn't come on till near the
middle of the act. Make yourself comfortable; I'll be back before long."

He drew aside a curtain and ushered his guest into the right-hand
stage-box, then vanished. Whitaker, finding himself the sole occupant of
the box, established himself in desolate grandeur as far out of sight as
he could arrange his chair, without losin