his brow and the light
of his boarding-house lamp during most of the evenings of two years,
until at last he was able to tell his confidants, rather huskily, that
there was "not one single superfluous word in it," not one that could
possibly be cut, nor one that could be changed without "altering the
significance of the whole work."

The moment was at hand when he was to see the vision of so many toilsome
hours begin to grow alive. What had been no more than little black marks
on white paper was now to become a living voice vibrating the actual
air. No wonder, then, that tremors seized him; Pygmalion shook as
Galatea began to breathe, and to young Canby it was no less a miracle
that his black marks and white paper should thus come to life.

"Miss Ellsling!" called the stage-manager. "Miss Ellsling, you're on.
You're on artificial stone bench in garden, down right. Mr. Nippert,
you're on. You're over yonder, right cen---"

"Not at all!" interrupted Talbot Potter, who had taken his seat at a
small table near the trough where the footlights lay asleep, like the
row of night-watchmen they were. "Not at all!" he repeated sharply,
thumping the table with his knuckles. "That's all out. It's cut. Nippert
doesn't come on in this scene at all. You've got the original script
there, Packer. Good heavens! Packer, can't you ever get anything right?
Didn't I distinctly tell you--Here! Come here! Not garden set, at all.
Play it interior, same as act second. Look, Packer, look! Miss Ellsling
down left, in chair by escritoire. In heaven's name, can you read,
Packer?"

"Yessir, yessir. I see, sir, I see!" said Packer with piteous eagerness,
taking the manuscript the star handed him. "Now, then, Miss Ellsling, if
you please--"

"I will have my tea indoors," Miss Ellsling began promptly, striking an
imaginary bell. "I will have my tea indoors, to-day, I think, Pritchard.
It is cooler indoors, to-day, I think, on the whole, and so it will
be pleasanter to have my tea indoors to-day. Strike bell again. Do you
hear, Pritchard?"

Out in the dimness beyond the stage the thin figure of the new
playwright rose dazedly from an orchestra chair.

"What--what's this?" he stammered, the choked sounds he made not
reaching the stage.

"What's the matter?" The question came from Carson Tinker, but his tone
was incurious, manifesting no interest whatever. Tinker's voice, like
his pale, spectacled glance, was not tired; it was dead.

"Tea!" gas