was stricken with appendicitis. There was not even time to rush him to
New York. He was on the operating table before the second act was
begun. When he came out of the ether he said: "How did it go?"

"Fine!" beamed the nurse. "You'll be out in two weeks."

"Oh, hell! I don't mean the operation. I mean the play."

He learned soon enough from the glowing, starry-eyed Sarah Haddon and
from every one connected with the play. He insisted on seeing them all
daily, against his doctor's orders, and succeeded in working up a
temperature that made his hospital stay a four weeks' affair. He refused
to take the tryout results as final.

"Don't be too bubbly about this thing," he cautioned Sarah Haddon. "I've
seen too many plays that were skyrockets on the road come down like
sticks when they struck New York."

The company stayed over in Atlantic City for a week, and Hahn held
scraps of rehearsals in his room when he had a temperature of 102. Sarah
Haddon worked like a slave. She seemed to realise that her great
opportunity had come--the opportunity for which hundreds of gifted
actresses wait a lifetime. Haddon was just twenty-eight then--a year
younger than Josie Fifer. She had not yet blossomed into the full
radiance of her beauty. She was too slender, and inclined to stoop a
bit, but her eyes were glorious, her skin petal-smooth, her whole face
reminding one, somehow, of an intelligent flower. Her voice was a
golden, liquid delight.

Josie Fifer, dragging herself from bed to chair, and from chair to bed,