had completely forgotten him and did not remember his name even now.
John Grant? Memory failed to produce any juvenile John Grant for her
inspection.

Puzzling over this problem, Jill missed much of the beginning of the
second act. Hers was a detachment which the rest of the audience
would gladly have shared. For the poetic drama, after a bad start,
was now plunging into worse depths of dulness. The coughing had
become almost continuous. The stalls, supported by the presence of
large droves of Sir Chester's personal friends, were struggling
gallantly to maintain a semblance of interest, but the pit and
gallery had plainly given up hope. The critic of a weekly paper of
small circulation, who had been shoved up in the upper circle, grimly
jotted down the phrase "apathetically received" on his programme. He
had come to the theatre that night in an aggrieved mood, for managers
usually put him in the dress-circle. He got out his pencil again.
Another phrase had occurred to him, admirable for the opening of his
article. "At the Leicester Theatre," he wrote, "where Sir Chester
Portwood presented 'Tried by Fire,' dulness reigned supreme. . . ."

But you never know. Call no evening dull till it is over. However
uninteresting its early stages may have been, that night was to be as
animated and exciting as any audience could desire,--a night to be
looked back to and talked about. For just as the critic of _London
Gossip_ wrote those damning words on his programme, guiding his
pencil uncertainly in the dark, a curious yet familiar odor stole
over the house.

The stalls got it first, and sniffed. It rose to the dress-circle,
and the dress-circle sniffed. Floating up, it smote the silent