e silently round the
orchestra seats to the stage-box--the same box that Whitaker had on the
former occasion occupied in company with Max.

They succeeded in taking possession without attracting attention, either
from the owners of that scanty scattering of shirt-bosoms in the
orchestra--the critical fraternity and those intimates bidden by the
manager to the first glimpse of his new revelation in stage-craft--or
from those occupying the stage.

The latter were but two. Evidently, though the curtain had been up for
some minutes, the action of the piece had not yet been permitted to
begin to unfold. Whitaker inferred that Max had been dissatisfied with
something about the lighting of the scene. The manager was standing in
mid-stage, staring up at the borders: a stout and pompous figure,
tenacious to every detail of that public self which he had striven so
successfully to make unforgettably individual; a figure quaintly
incongruous in his impeccable morning-coat and striped trousers and
flat-brimmed silk hat, perched well back on his head, with his malacca
stick and lemon-coloured gloves and small and excessively glossy
patent-leather shoes, posed against the counterfeit of a moonlit formal
garden.

Aside from him, the only other occupant of the stage was Sara Law. She
sat on a stone bench with her profile to the audience, her back to the
right of the proscenium arch; so that she could not, without turning,
have noticed the entrance of Ember and her husband. A shy, slight,
deathlessly youthful figure in pale and flowing garments that moulded
themselves fluently to her sweet and girlish body, in a posture of
pensive meditation: she was nothing less than adorable. Whitaker could
not take his eyes from her, for sheer wonder and delight.

He was only vaguely conscious that Max, at length satisfied, barked a
word to that effect to an unseen electrician off to the left, and waving
his hand with a gesture indelibly associated with his personality,
dragged a light cane-seated chair to the left of the proscenium and sat
himself down.

"All ready?" he demanded in a sharp and irritable voice.

The woman on the marble seat nodded imperceptibly.

"Go ahead," snapped the manager....

An actor advanced from the wings, paused and addressed the seated woman.
His lines were brief. She lifted her head with a startled air,
listening. He ceased to speak, and her voice of golden velvet filled the
house with the flowing beauty of its