the
crowd. His face was toward the Library, with its two annoyed pet lions,
typifying learning, and he appeared to study the great building. One
or two of the passersby had seen him standing on that self-same spot
before;--in fact, he always stopped there whenever he walked down the
Avenue.

For a little time (not too long) he stood there; and thus absorbed he
was, as they say, a Picture. Moreover, being such a popular one, he
attracted much interest. People paused to observe him; and all unaware
of their attention, he suddenly smiled charmingly, as at some gentle
pleasantry in his own mind--something he had remembered from a book,
no doubt. It was a wonderful smile, and vanished slowly, leaving a rapt
look; evidently he was lost in musing upon architecture and sculpture
and beautiful books. A girl whisking by in an automobile had time to
guess, reverently, that the phrase in his mind was: "A Stately Home for
Beautiful Books!" Dinner-tables would hear, that evening, how Talbot
Potter stood there, oblivious of everything else, studying the Library!

This slight sketch of artistic reverie completed, he went on, proceeding
a little more rapidly down the Avenue; presently turned over to the
stage door of Wallack's, made his way through the ensuing passages, and
appeared upon the vasty stage of the old theatre, where his company of
actors awaited his coming to begin the rehearsal of a new play.

II

"First act, please, ladies and gentlemen!"

Thus spake, without emotion, Packer, the stage-manager; but out in the
dusky auditorium, Stewart Canby, the new playwright, began to tremble.
It was his first rehearsal.

He and one other sat in the shadowy hollow of the orchestra, two obscure
little shapes on the floor of the enormous cavern. The other was Talbot
Potter's manager, Carson Tinker, a neat, grim, small old man with a
definite appearance of having long ago learned that after a little
while life will beat anybody's game, no matter how good. He observed
the nervousness of the playwright, but without interest. He had seen too
many.

Young Canby's play was a study of egoism, being the portrait of a man
wholly given over to selfish ambitions finally attained, but "at
the cost of every good thing in his life," including the loss of his
"honour," his lady-love, and the trust and affection of his friends.
Young Canby had worked patiently at his manuscript, rewriting,
condensing, pouring over it the sincere sweat of