offing. That was the stage and life.

As for this Antoinette Holiday girl, he had none too much hope. Max
Hempel never hoped much on general principles, so far as potential stars
were concerned. He had seen too many of them go off fizz bang into
nothingness, like rockets. It was more than likely he was on a false
trail, that people who had seen the girl act in amateur things had
exaggerated her ability. He trusted no judgment but his own, which was
perhaps one of the reasons why he was one of the greatest living stage
managers. It was more than likely she had nothing but a pretty, shallow
little talent for play acting and no notion under the sun of giving up
society or matrimony or what-not for the devilish hard work of a stage
career. Very likely there was some young galoot waiting even now, to
whisk Laura LaRue's daughter off the stage before she ever got on.

Moreover there was always her family to cope with, dyed in the wool New
Englanders at that, no doubt with the heavy Puritan mortmain upon them,
narrow as a shoe string, circumscribed as a duck pond, walled in by
ghastly respectability. Ten to one, if the girl had talent and ambition,
they would smother these things in her, balk her at every turn. They had
regarded Ned Holiday's marriage to Laura a misalliance, he recalled.
There had been quite a to-do about it at the time. Good God! It had been
a misalliance all right, but not as they reckoned it. It had not been
considered suitable for a Holiday to marry an actress. Probably it would
be considered more unsuitable for a Holiday to _be_ an actress. Suitable!
Bah! The question was not whether the career was fit for the girl, but
whether the girl could measure up to the career. And irascibly,
unreasonably indignant as if he had already been contending in argument
with legions of mythical, over-respectable Holidays, Max Hempel whipped
his paper open to another page, a page that told of a drive somewhere on