"Dear old Tootles," he said,
"what's happened? Try and tell me what's happened? I don't understand."

"You don't understand, because you don't know the tricks of this rotten
theater. For eleven weeks I've been rehearsing. For eleven weeks--time
enough to produce a couple of Shakespeare's bally plays in Latin,--I've
put up with the brow-beating of that mad dog Jackrack. For eleven
weeks, without touching one dirty little Mosely cent, I've worked at my
part and numbers, morning, noon and night; and now, on the edge of
production, he cuts me out and puts in a simpering cow with a
fifteen-thousand-dollar necklace and a snapping little Pekinese to
oblige one of his angels, and I'm reduced to the chorus. I wish I was
dead, I tell you--I wish I was dead and buried and at peace. I wish I
could creep home and get into bed and never see another day of this
cruel life. Oh, I'm just whipped and broke and out. Take me away, take
me away, Martin. I'm through."

Martin put his arm round the slight, shaking form, led her to one of
the doors and out into a narrow passage that ran up into the deserted
street. To have gone down into the stalls and hit that oily martinet in
the mouth would have been to lay himself open to a charge of cruelty to
animals. He was so puny and fat and soft. Poor little Tootles, who had
had a tardy and elusive recognition torn from her grasp! It was a
tragedy.

It was not much more than a stone's-throw from the theater to the
rabbit warren in West Forty-sixth Street, but Martin gave a shout at a
prowling taxi. Not even policemen and newspaper boys and street
cleaners must see this girl as she was then, in a collapse of smashed
hopes, sobbing dreadfully, completely broken down. It wasn't fair. In
all that city of courageous under-dogs and fate-fighters, there was not
one who pretended to careless contentment with a chin so high as
Tootles. He half carried her into the cab, trying with a queer
blundering sympathy to soothe and quiet her. And he had almost
succeeded by the time they reached the brownstone house of sitters,
bedrooms and baths, gas stoves, cubby-holes, the persistent reek of
onions, cigarettes and hot cheese. The hysteria of the artistic
temperament, or the natural exaggeration of an artificial life, had
worn itself out for the time being. Rather pathetic little sobs had
taken its place, it was with a face streaked with the black stuff from
her eyelashes that Tootles turned quickly to Martin at t