poet.

Goldwater stopped dead. 'Can't you sweep quietly?' he thundered
terribly through the music.

Ignatz Levitsky tapped his baton, and the orchestra paused.

'It is I, the author!' said Pinchas, struggling up through clouds like
some pagan deity.

Hamlet's face grew as inky as his cloak. 'And what do you want?'

'What do I want?' repeated Pinchas, in sheer amaze.

Kloot, in his peaked cap, emerged from the wings munching a sandwich.

'Sure, there's Shakespeare!' he said. 'I've just been round to the
cafe to find you. Got this sandwich there.'

'But this--this isn't the first rehearsal,' stammered Pinchas, a jot
appeased.

'The first dress-rehearsal,' Kloot replied reassuringly. 'We don't
trouble authors with the rough work. They stroll in and put on the
polish. Won't you come on the stage?'

Unable to repress a grin of happiness, Pinchas stumbled through the
dim parterre, barking his shins at almost every step. Arrived at the
orchestra, he found himself confronted by a chasm. He wheeled to the
left, to where the stage-box, shrouded in brown holland, loomed
ghostly.

'No,' said Kloot, 'that door's got stuck. You must come round by the
stage-door.'

Pinchas retraced his footsteps, barking the smooth remainder of his
shins. He allowed himself a palpitating pause before the lobby
posters. His blood chilled. Not only was Ignatz Levitsky starred in
equal type, but another name stood out larger than either:

_Ophelia_ .. .. .. _Fanny Goldwater._

His wrath reflaming, he hurried round to the stage-door. He pushed it
open, but a gruff voice inquired his business, and a burly figure
blocked his way.

'I am the author,' he said with quiet dignity.

'Authors ain't admitted,' was the simple reply.

'But Goldwater awaits me,' the poet protested.

'I guess not. Mr. Kloot's orders. Can't have authors monkeying around
here.' As he spoke Goldwater's voice rose from the neighbouring stage
in an operatic melody, and reduced Pinchas's brain to chaos. A
despairing sense of strange plots and treasons swept over him. He ran
back to the lobby. The doors had been bolted. He beat against them
with his cane and his fists and his toes till a tall policeman
persuaded him that home was better than a martyr's cell.

Life remained an unintelligible nightmare for poor Pinchas till the
first night--and the third act--of the Yiddish 'Hamlet.' He had
reconciled himself to his extrusion from rehearsals. 'They fear I fire