better
if we was running the world ... first-page stories again tomorrow in
every paper in town. We'll have to hire the Hippodrome."

"First-page stories, what do you mean?"

Lewis looked at the young man and enlightened. "Oh, I forgot you didn't
know the latest. Well, the girl's mother is dead and the old man's just
followed suit in a pauper's cot in Bellevue. How's that for
heart-interest? You're a reporter. I ask you, will they feature that on
Park row? Will they give us space for _that_ I ask you?"

"And she went on ... my God!"

"Oh, of course I ain't told her yet," Mr. Lewis hastened to add. "She
might have gone up."

Smitherton caught him violently by the arm and backed him farther
against the wall. His own face was suddenly pale. "You withheld the news
and let her go on? You did that?"

But the vaudeville manager only gazed blankly back into those indignant
eyes and his face was full of perplexity.

"For God's sake, Smitherton, what are you pulling all this tragedy stuff
about? Ain't you her manager? Did you want the whole act queered? Wasn't
the old woman nutty and the old man a bum, and weren't they dead-weight
for her to carry? Didn't they have to die sometime--and could they ever
have picked a luckier time to do it? I ask you now, could they?"

"Great God!" exclaimed the reporter. But the manager went on.

"I call it a miracle of luck. God's good to some folks! Here that girl
gets all her troubles settled at a single stroke--and tomorrow she's the
biggest headliner on Broadway ... and you, the feller that ought to be
out hustling her business interests, stand there gaping like you was
sore because she didn't fliver. I don't get you."

Mr. Lewis's voice was freighted with disgust, then, seeing that the
climax had been reached on the stage, he turned away and signaled to
ring down. "Take all the curtains you can get out of it," he instructed
the stage-manager--as he once more rubbed his hands.

Smitherton stood silent, seeing the curtain descend, then rise and fall
time after time to a thunder of applause. He saw Mary Burton, with all
her distaste masked behind the regal tranquillity of her splendid eyes
and her cruelly wasted courage, bowing, not like an actress, but like an
empress. Then she passed them and closed the door of her dressing-room.

Smitherton heard Lewis' voice once more, accompanied by something like a
sigh. "Now comes the tough part," said the manager. "I've got to go and
break