vanced in her character of ingenue, speaking with an effect of
gayety: "Now what are you two good people conspiring about?"

Potter stamped the floor; there was wrenched from him an incoherent
shriek containing fragments of profane words and ending distinguishably
with: "It's that Missmiss again!"

Packer impelled himself upon Miss Malone, pushing her back. "No, no,
no!" he cried. "Count ten! Count ten before you come down with that
speech. You mustn't interrupt Mr. Potter, Miss--Miss--"

"It was my cue," she said composedly, showing her little pamphlet of
typewritten manuscript. "Wasn't I meant to speak on the cue?"

Talbot Potter recovered himself sufficiently to utter a cry of despair:
"And these are the kind of people an artist must work with!" He lifted
his arms to heaven, calling upon the high gods for pity; then, with
a sudden turn of fury, ran to the back of the stage and came mincing
forward evidently intending saturnine mimicry, repeating the ingenue's
speech in a mocking falsetto: "Now what are you two good people
conspiring about?" After that he whirled upon her, demanding with
ferocity: "You've got something you can think with in your head, haven't
you, Missmiss? Then what do you think of that?"

Miss Malone smiled, and it was a smile that would have gone a long way
at a college dance. Here, it made the pitying company shudder for her.
"I think it's a silly, makeshift sort of a speech," she said cheerfully,
in which opinion the unhappy playwright out in the audience hotly
agreed. "It's a bit of threadbare archness, and if I were to play Miss
Lyston's part, I'd be glad to have it changed!"

Potter looked dazed. "Is it your idea," he said in a ghostly voice,
"that I was asking for your impression of the dramatic and literary
value of that line?"

She seemed surprised. "Weren't you?"

It was too much for Potter. He had brilliant and unusual powers of
expression, but this was beyond them. He went to the chair beside the
little table, flung himself upon it, his legs outstretched, his arms
dangling inert, and stared haggardly upward at nothing.

Packer staggered into the breach. "You interrupted the smile,
Miss--Mi--"

"Miss Malone," she prompted.

"You interrupted the smile, Miss Malone. Mr. Potter gives them the smile
there. You must count ten for it, after your cue. Ten--slow. Count slow.
Mark it on your sides, Miss--ah--Miss. 'Count ten for smile. Write it
down please, Miss--Miss--"

Potter spo