ened, and he walked
slowly, lost in deep reverie. By and by he came to a halt, and stood
still for several minutes without knowing it. Slowly he came out of the
trance, wondering where he was. Then he realized that his staring
eyes had halted him automatically; and as they finally conveyed their
information to his conscious mind, he perceived that he was standing
directly in front of a saloon, and glaring at the sign upon the window:

ALES WINES LIQUORS AND CIGARS

TIM MALONE

At that, somewhere in his inside, he cried out, in a kind of anguish:
"Isn't there anything--anywhere--any more--except Wanda Malone!"

IX

"Second act, ladies and gentlemen!" cried Packer, at precisely ten
o'clock the next morning.

About a dozen actors were chatting in small groups upon the stage;
three or four paced singly, muttering and mildly gesticulating, with
the fretful preoccupation of people trying to remember; two or three,
seated, bent over their typewritten "sides," studying intently; and a
few, invisible from the auditorium, were scattered about the rearward
rooms and passageways. Talbot Potter, himself, was nowhere to be seen,
and, what was even more important to one tumultuously beating heart "in
front," neither was Wanda Malone. Mr. Stewart Canby in a silvery
new suit, wearing a white border to his waistcoat collar and other
decorations proper to a new playwright, sat in the centre of the front
row of the orchestra. Yesterday he had taken a seat about nine rows
back.

He bore no surface signs of the wear and tear of a witches' night;
riding his runaway play and fighting the enchantment that was upon him.
Elastic twenty-seven does not mark a bedless session with violet arcs
below its eyes;--what violet a witch had used upon Stewart Canby this
morning appeared as a dewey boutonniere in the lapel of his new coat; he
was that far gone.

Miss Ellsling and a youth of the company took their places near the
front of the stage and began the rehearsal of the second act with a
dialogue that led up to the entrance of the star with the "ingenue,"
both of whom still remained out of the playwright's range of vision.

As the moment for their appearance drew near, Canby became, to his own
rage, almost uncontrollably agitated. Miss Ellsling's scene, which he
should have followed carefully, meant nothing to him but a ticking off
of the seconds before he should behold with his physical eyes the
living presence of the fairy gh