pacing the sunlit porch, deep in thought.

"There will never be another opportunity like that," he groaned, at
the close of a ten minute dissertation on the treachery of friends;
"never in all the years to come. The driveling fools! What do I pay
them for? To let me lie there snoring so loud that I couldn't hear
opportunity for the noise I was making? As in everything else I
undertake, my dear Barnes, I excel at snoring. My lung capacity is
something amazing. It has to have an outlet. They let me lie there
like a log while the richest publicity material that ever fell to the
lot of an actor went to waste,--utter waste. Why, damme, sir, I could
have made that scene in the tap-room historic; I could have made it so
dramatic that it would have thrilled to the marrow every man, woman
and child in the United States of America. That's what I mean. They
allowed a chance like that to get away. Can you beat it? Tragedy at my
very elbow,--by gad, almost nudging me, you might say,--and no one to
tell me to get up. Think of the awful requiem I could have--But what's
the use thinking about it now? I am so exasperated I can't think of
anything but anathemas, so--"

"I don't see how you managed to sleep through it," Barnes broke in.
"You must have an unusually clear conscience, Mr. Rushcroft."

"I haven't any conscience at all, sir," roared the star. "I had an
unusually full stomach, that's what was the matter with me. Damme, I
ought to have known better. I take oath now, sir, never to eat again
as long as I live. A man who cannot govern his beastly appetite ought
to defy it, if nothing else."

"I gather from that remark that you omitted breakfast this morning."