ou at a loss before. You look as sheepish as a
stage-door Johnnie when his inamorata gets into the other fellow's car.
Ban, you never hung about stage-doors, did you? I think it would be good
for you; tame your proud spirit and all that. Why don't you write one of
your 'Eban' sketches on John H. Stage-Door?"

"I'll do better than that. Give me of your wisdom on the subject and
I'll write an interview with you for Tittle-Tattle."

"Do! And make me awfully clever, please. Our press-agent hasn't put
anything over for weeks. He's got a starving wife and seven drunken
children, or something like that, and, as he'll take all the credit for
the interview and even claim that he wrote it unless you sign it,
perhaps it'll get him a raise and he can then buy the girl who plays the
manicure part a bunch of orchids. _He_'d have been a stage-door Johnnie
if he hadn't stubbed his toe and become a press-agent."

"All right," said Banneker. "Now: I'll ask the stupid questions and you
give the cutie answers."

It was two o'clock when Miss Betty Raleigh, having seen the gist of all
her witty and profound observations upon a strange species embodied in
three or four scrawled notes on the back of a menu, rose and observed
that, whereas acting was her favorite pastime, her real and serious
business was sleep. At her door she held her face up to him as
straightforwardly as a child. "Good luck to you, dear boy," she said
softly. "If I ever were a fortune-teller, I would say that your star was
for happiness and success."

He bent and kissed her cheek lightly. "I'll have my try at success," he
said. "But the other isn't so easy."

"You'll find them one and the same," was her parting prophecy.

Inured to work at all hours, Banneker went to the small, bare room in
his apartment which he kept as a study, and sat down to write the
interview. Angles of dawn-light had begun to irradiate the steep canyon
of the street by the time he had finished. He read it over and found it
good, for its purposes. Every line of it sparkled. It had the
effervescent quality which the reading public loves to associate with
stage life and stage people. Beyond that, nothing. Banneker mailed it to
Miss Westlake for typing, had a bath, and went to bed. At noon he was at
The Ledger office, fresh, alert, and dispassionately curious to
ascertain the next resolution of the mix-up between the paper and
himself.

Nothing happened; at least, nothing indicative. Mr. Greenou