contract, Mr. Grady sent an appraising eye about the room and proceeded
drily, "All present or accounted for, it seems--and Good Lord, how they
love us! It's really touching--they're just like trained rattle-snakes."

"Can't say I blame 'em much," Farquaharson stifled a yawn. "Dress
Rehearsal until two this morning followed by a call for line rehearsal
again at eleven. When they get through that, if they ever do, there's
nothing more except the strain of a first night."

Mr. Grady grinned. "That's the gay life of trouping. It's what girls
leave home for. By the way, how much sleep did you get yourself?"

"About three hours."

"You'll feel fine by to-night when the merry villagers shout 'Author!
Author!'" The heavy gentleman looked at his watch and added, with the
producer's note of command, "When we finish here we'd better go to my
room and see how the dialogue sounds in the rewritten scene."

Later Stuart sat in the empty auditorium of the theater where the
sheeted chairs stretched off into a circle of darkness. The stage, naked
of setting; the actors whose haggard faces looked ghastly beyond the
retrievement of make-up; the noisy and belated frenzy of carpenters and
stage crew: all these were sights and sounds grown so stale that he
found it hard to focus his attention on those nuances of interpretation
which would make or ruin his play. He was conscious only of a yearning
to find some quiet place where there was shade along a sea beach, and
there to lie down and die happily.

About noon Mr. Grady, who had for some purpose gone "back," resumed his
seat at the author's side and, between incisive criticism shouted
through his megaphone, suggested, in the contrast of a conversational
tone, "Don't you ever look in your letter box? Here's mail for you."

Absently Stuart took the envelope and when the scene ended made his way
to the light of the open stage door to investigate its contents. There,
seeking asylum from the greater heat of the wings he came upon the
ingenue, indulging in the luxury of exhausted tears.

Farquaharson glanced at the note carelessly at first and the signature
momentarily baffled him. Eben Tollman signed his name with such marked
originality that it was almost as difficult to decipher as to forge.

But that was a minor and short-lived perplexity. It was indubitably Eben
Tollman who had sent this invitation and he said that he did so at the
request of his wife.

The face of Stuart Farquaha