Thus spake, without emotion, Packer, the stage-manager; but out
in the dusky auditorium, Stewart Canby, the new playwright,
began to tremble. It was his first rehearsal.

He and one other sat in the shadowy hollow of the orchestra,
two obscure little shapes on the floor of the enormous cavern.
The other was Talbot Potter's manager, Carson Tinker, a neat,
grim, small old man with a definite appearance of having long
ago learned that after a little while life will beat anybody's
game, no matter how good. He observed the nervousness of the
playwright, but without interest. He had seen too many.

Young Canby's play was a study of egoism, being the portrait of
a man wholly given over to selfish ambitions finally attained,
but "at the cost of every good thing in his life," including
the loss of his "honour," his lady-love, and the trust and
affection of his friends. Young Canby had worked patiently at
his manuscript, rewriting, condensing, pouring over it the
sincere sweat of his brow and the light of his boarding-house
lamp during most of the evenings of two years, until at last he
was able to tell his confidants, rather huskily, that there was
"not one single superfluous word in it," not one that could
possibly be cut, nor one that could be changed without
"altering the significance of the whole work."

The moment was at hand when he was to see the vision of so many
toilsome hours begin to grow alive. What had been no more than
little black marks on white paper was now to become a living
voice vibrating the actual air. No wonder, then, that tremors