tage and was smiling the
wonderful smile. "Mildred, and you, my other friends, good friends," he
began, "for I know that you are all true friends here, and I can trust
you with a secret very near my heart--"

"Most of them are supposed never to have seen him before," said Canby,
hoarsely. "And she's just told them they could judge for themselves
when--"

"They won't notice that."

"You mean the audience won't--"

"No, they won't," said Tinker.

"But good heavens! it's 'Donald Gray,' the other character, that trusts
him with the secret, and he betrays it later. This upsets the whole--"

"Well, talk to him. I can't help it."

"It is a political secret," Potter continued, reading from a manuscript
in his hand, "and almost a matter of life and death. But I trust you
with it openly and fearlessly because--"

At this point his voice was lost in a destroying uproar. Perceiving
that the rehearsal was well under way, and that the star had made his
entrance, two of the stage-hands attached to the theatre ascended to
the flies and set up a great bellowing on high. "Lower that strip!"
"You don't want that strip lowered, I tell you!" "Oh, my Lord! Can't you
lower that strip!" Another workman at the rear of the stage began to saw
a plank, and somebody else, concealed behind a bit of scenery, hammered
terrifically upon metal. Altogether it was a successful outbreak.

Potter threw his manuscript upon the table, a gesture that caused the
shoulders of Packer to move in a visible shudder, and the company, all
eyes fixed upon the face of the star, suddenly wore the look of people
watching a mysterious sealed packet from which a muffled ticking is
heard. The bellowing and the sawing and the hammering increased in fury.

In the orchestra a rusty gleam of something like mummified pleasure
passed unseen behind the spectacles of old Carson Tinker. "Stage-hands
are the devil," he explained to the stupefied Canby. "Rehearsals bore
them and they love to hear what an actor says when his nerves go to
pieces. If Potter blows up they'll quiet down to enjoy it and then do it
again pretty soon. If he doesn't blow up he'll take it out on somebody
else later."

Potter stood silent in the centre of the stage, expressionless, which
seemed to terrify the stage-manager. "Just one second, Mr. Potter!" he
screamed, his brow pearly with the anguish of apprehension. "Just one
second, sir!"

He went hotfoot among the disturbers, protesting, commandi