he returned to his
earlier metaphor, "I know the big fences over which we may come a
cropper. I can see them ahead before we come up to them and know the
danger. We are over two of them, by the way. But on the whole I am more
interested than nervous. It's the first time I have ever been to a first
night, you see."

"Well, upon my word," cried Hardiman, "you are the coolest hand at it I
ever saw." But he could have taken back his words the next moment.

In spite of Hillyard's aloof and disinterested air, the night had
brought its excitement and in a strength of which he himself was
unaware. It lifted now the veils behind which a man will hide his secret
thoughts! He turned swiftly to Hardiman with a boyish light upon his
face.

"Oh, I am not in doubt of what to-night means to me! Not for a moment.
If it's failure, it means that I begin again to-morrow on something
else; and again after that, and again after that, until success does
come. Playwriting is my profession, and failures are a necessary part of
it--just as much a part as the successes. But even if the great success
were to come now, it wouldn't mean quite so much to me perhaps as it
might to other people." He paused, and a smile broke upon his face. "I
live expecting a messenger. There! That's my secret delivered over to
you under the excitement of a first night."

And as he spoke the colour mounted into his face. He turned away in
confusion. His play was nearer at his heart than he had thought; the
enthusiasm which seemed to be greeting it had stirred him unwisely.

"Tell me," he said hurriedly, "who all these people in the stalls are."

He peeped down between the edge of the curtain and the side wall of the
box whilst Hardiman stood up behind him.

"Yes, I will be your man from Cook's," said Hardiman genially.

His heart warmed to the young man both on account of his outburst and of
the shame which had followed upon the heels of it. Few beliefs had
survived in Hardiman after forty years of wandering up and down the
flowery places of the earth; but one--he had lectured Harry Luttrell
upon it on a night at Stockholm--continually gained strength in him.
Youth must beget visions and man must preserve them if great work were
to be done; and so easily the visions lost their splendour and their
inspiration. Of all the ways of tarnishing the vision, perhaps talk was
the most murderous. Hillyard possessed them. Hillyard was ashamed that
he had spoken of them.