The covered passage opened at one end on one of the steep streets
of the Adelphi, and at the other on a terrace overlooking
the sunset-coloured river. One side of the passage was a blank wall,
for the building it supported was an old unsuccessful theatre restaurant,
now shut up. The other side of the passage contained two doors,
one at each end. Neither was what was commonly called the stage door;
they were a sort of special and private stage doors used by
very special performers, and in this case by the star actor
and actress in the Shakespearean performance of the day.
Persons of that eminence often like to have such private exits
and entrances, for meeting friends or avoiding them.

The two men in question were certainly two such friends,
men who evidently knew the doors and counted on their opening,
for each approached the door at the upper end with equal coolness
and confidence. Not, however, with equal speed; but the man
who walked fast was the man from the other end of the tunnel,
so they both arrived before the secret stage door almost at
the same instant. They saluted each other with civility,
and waited a moment before one of them, the sharper walker
who seemed to have the shorter patience, knocked at the door.

In this and everything else each man was opposite and neither
could be called inferior. As private persons both were handsome,
capable and popular. As public persons, both were in the first public rank.
But everything about them, from their glory to their good looks,
was of a diverse and incomparable kind. Sir Wilson Seymour was
the kind of man whose importance is known to everybody who knows.
The more you mixed with the innermost ring in every polity or profession,