pages of his manuscript with fluttering fingers and keeping his
eyes fixed guiltily upon it. The company of actors also
carefully removed their gaze from the star and looked guilty.

Potter allowed the fatal hush to continue, while the
culpability of Packer and the company seemed mysteriously to
increase until they all reeked with it. The stage-hands had
withdrawn in a grieved manner somewhere into the huge rearward
spaces of the old building. They belonged to the theatre, not
to Potter, and, besides, they had a union. But the actors were
dependent upon Potter for the coming winter's work and wages;
they were his employees.

At last he spoke: "We will go on with the rehearsal," he said
quietly.

"Ah!" murmured old Tinker. "He'll take it out on somebody
else." And with every precaution not to jar down a seat in
passing, he edged his way to the aisle and went softly thereby
to the extreme rear of the house. He was an employee, too.




III


It was a luckless lady who helped to fulfil the prediction.
Technically she was the "ingenue"; publicly she was "Miss Carol
Lyston"; legally she was a Mrs. Surbilt, being wife to the