Most of those present had been acting, but a certain number had been
to the opening performance of the latest better-than-Raffles play.
There had been something of a boom that season in dramas whose
heroes appealed to the public more pleasantly across the footlights
than they might have done in real life. In the play that had opened
to-night, Arthur Mifflin, an exemplary young man off the stage, had
been warmly applauded for a series of actions which, performed
anywhere except in the theater, would certainly have debarred him
from remaining a member of the Strollers' or any other club. In
faultless evening dress, with a debonair smile on his face, he had
broken open a safe, stolen bonds and jewelry to a large amount, and
escaped without a blush of shame via the window. He had foiled a
detective through four acts, and held up a band of pursuers with a
revolver. A large audience had intimated complete approval
throughout.

"It's a hit all right," said somebody through the smoke.

"These near-'Raffles' plays always are," grumbled Willett, who
played bluff fathers in musical comedy. "A few years ago, they would
have been scared to death of putting on a show with a crook as hero.
Now, it seems to me the public doesn't want anything else. Not that
they know what they DO want," he concluded, mournfully.

"The Belle of Boulogne," in which Willett sustained the role of
Cyrus K. Higgs, a Chicago millionaire, was slowly fading away on a
diet of paper, and this possibly prejudiced him.

Raikes, the character actor, changed the subject. If Willett once
got started on the wrongs of the ill-fated "Belle," general