had eluded her eager hands, although she had paid for it in advance
with something more than blood and energy. "Dear old Tootles," he
said, "what's happened? Try and tell me what's happened? I don't
understand."

"You don't understand, because you don't know the tricks of this
rotten theater. For eleven weeks I've been rehearsing. For eleven
weeks--time enough to produce a couple of Shakespeare's bally plays
in Latin,--I've put up with the brow-beating of that mad dog
Jackrack. For eleven weeks, without touching one dirty little Mosely
cent, I've worked at my part and numbers, morning, noon and night;
and now, on the edge of production, he cuts me out and puts in a
simpering cow with a fifteen-thousand-dollar necklace and a snapping
little Pekinese to oblige one of his angels, and I'm reduced to the
chorus. I wish I was dead, I tell you--I wish I was dead and buried
and at peace. I wish I could creep home and get into bed and never
see another day of this cruel life. Oh, I'm just whipped and broke
and out. Take me away, take me away, Martin. I'm through."

Martin put his arm round the slight, shaking form, led her to one of
the doors and out into a narrow passage that ran up into the
deserted street. To have gone down into the stalls and hit that oily
martinet in the mouth would have been to lay himself open to a
charge of cruelty to animals. He was so puny and fat and soft. Poor
little Tootles, who had had a tardy and elusive recognition torn
from her grasp! It was a tragedy.

It was not much more than a stone's-throw from the theater to the
rabbit warren in West Forty-sixth Street, but Martin gave a shout at
a prowling taxi. Not even policemen and newspaper boys and street