For he had seen something he had not expected to see--a real play, with
real magic to it, such magic as all his cunning stage artifice, all the
studied artistry of his fearfully and wonderfully salaried stellar
attachments somehow missed achieving. He tried afterwards to explain to
Carol Clay, his favorite star, just what the quality of the magic was,
but somehow he could not get it into words. It wasn't exactly wordable
perhaps. It was something that rendered negligible the occasionally
creaking mechanism and crudeness of stage business and rendition;
something compounded of dew and sun and wind, such as could only be found
in a veritable Forest of Arden; something elusive, exquisite, iridescent;
something he had supposed had vanished from the world about the time they
put Pan out of business and stopped up the Pipes of Arcady. It was
enchanting, elemental, genuine Elizabethan, had the spirit of Master
Skylark himself in it. Maybe it was the spirit of youth itself, immortal
youth, playing immortal youth's supreme play? Who knows or can lay finger
upon the secret of the magic? The great stage manager did not and could
not. He only knew that, in spite of himself, he had drunk deep for a
moment of true elixir.

But as for Rosalind herself that was another matter. Max Hempel was
entirely capable of analyzing his impressions there and correlating them
with the cold hard business on which he had come. Even if the play had
proved a greater bore than he had anticipated, the trip from Broadway to
the Academy of Music would still have been materially worth while.
Antoinette Holiday was a genuine find, authentic star stuff. They hadn't
spoiled her, plastered her over with meaningless mannerisms. She was
virgin material--untrained, with worlds to learn, of course; but with a
spark of the true fire in her--her mother's own daughter, which was the
most promising thing anybody could say of her.