Marrier, beaming, admonished him, and then pushed.

"What must I say?" stammered Carlo.

"Whatever comes into your head."

"All right! I'll say something."

A man in a dirty white apron drew back the heavy mass of the curtain
about eighteen inches, and Carlo Trent stepping forward, the glare
of the footlights suddenly lit his white face. The applause, now
multiplied fivefold and become deafening, seemed to beat him back
against the curtain. His lips worked. He did not bow.

"Cam back, you fool!" whispered Marrier.

And Carlo Trent stepped back into safe shelter.

"Why didn't you say something?"

"I c-couldn't," murmured weakly the greatest dramatic poet in the
world, and began to cry.

"Speech! Speech! Speech! Speech!"

"Here!" said Edward Henry, gruffly. "Get out of my way! I'll settle
'em! Get out of my way!" And he riddled Carlo Trent with a fusillade
of savagely scornful glances.

The man in the apron obediently drew back the curtain again, and the
next second Edward Henry was facing an auditorium crowded with his
patrons. Everybody was standing up, chiefly in the aisles and crowded
at the entrances, and quite half the people were waving, and quite a
quarter of them were shouting. He bowed several times. An age elapsed.
His ears were stunned. But it seemed to him that his brain was working
with marvellous perfection. He perceived that he had been utterly
wrong about "The Orient Pearl." And that all his advisers had been
splendidly right. He had failed to catch its charm and to feel its
power. But this audience--this magnificent representative audience
drawn from London in the brilliant height of the season--had not
failed.

It occurred to him to raise his hand. And as he raised his hand it
occurred to him that his hand held a lighted cigarette. A magic hush
fell upon the magnificent audience, which owned all that endless line
of automobiles outside. Edward Henry, in the hush, took a pull at his
cigarette.

"Ladies and gentlemen," he said, pitching his voice well--for
municipal politics had made him a practised public speaker, "I
congratulate you. This evening you--have succeeded!"

There was a roar, confused, mirthful, humorously protesting. He
distinctly heard a man in the front row of the stalls say: "Well, for
sheer nerve--!" And then go off into a peal of laughter.

He smiled and retired.

Marrier took charge of him.

"You merit the entire confectioner's shop!" exclaimed Marrier, aghast,