ces came to her with that thin and reedy effect
which is produced by people talking in an empty building. She sat down
at the back of the house, and, as her eyes grew accustomed to the gloom,
was able to see Gerald sitting in the front row beside a man with a bald
head fringed with orange hair whom she took correctly to be Mr. Bunbury,
the producer. Dotted about the house in ones and twos were members of
the company whose presence was not required in the first act. On the
stage, Elsa Doland, looking very attractive, was playing a scene with a
man in a bowler hat. She was speaking a line, as Sally came in.

"Why, what do you mean, father?"

"Tiddly-omty-om," was the bowler-hatted one's surprising reply.
"Tiddly-omty-om... long speech ending in 'find me in the library.' And
exit," said the man in the bowler hat, starting to do so.

For the first time Sally became aware of the atmosphere of nerves.
Mr. Bunbury, who seemed to be a man of temperament, picked up his
walking-stick, which was leaning against the next seat, and flung it
with some violence across the house.

"For God's sake!" said Mr. Bunbury.

"Now what?" inquired the bowler hat, interested, pausing hallway across
the stage.

"Do speak the lines, Teddy," exclaimed Gerald. "Don't skip them in that
sloppy fashion."

"You don't want me to go over the whole thing?" asked the bowler hat,
amazed.

"Yes!"

"Not the whole damn thing?" queried the bowler hat, fighting with
incredulity.

"This is a rehearsal," snapped Mr. Bunbury. "If we are not going to do
it properly, what's the use of doing it at all?"

This seemed to strike the erring Teddy, if not as reasonable, at any
rate as one way of looking at it. He delivered the speech in an injured
tone and shuffled off. The atmosphere of tenseness was unmistakable now.
Sally could feel it. The world of the theatre is simply a large nursery
and its inhabitants children who readily become fretful if anything goes
wrong. The waiting and the uncertainty, the loafing about in strange
hotels in a strange city, the dreary rehearsing of lines which had been
polished to the last syllable more than a week ago--these things had
sapped the nerve of the Primrose Way company and demoralization had set
in. It would require only a trifle to produce an explosion.

Elsa Doland now moved to the door, pressed a bell, and, taking a
magazine from the table, sat down in a chair near the footlights.
A moment later, in answer to the