him any better than you do
now, Mr. Canby; you'll only know him more. I've been with him for four
years--stage-manager--hired man--maid-of-all-work--order his meals for
him in hotels--and I guess old Tinker and I know him as well as anybody
does, but it's a mighty big job to handle him just right. It keeps us
hopping, but that's bread and butter. Not much bread and butter anywhere
these days unless you do hop! We all have to hop for somebody!" He
chuckled again, and then unexpectedly became so serious he was almost
truculent. "And I tell you, Mr. Canby," he cried, "by George! I'd
sooner hop for Talbot Potter than for any other man that ever walked the
earth!"

He took a yellow walking-stick from under his arm, thrust the manuscript
Potter had given him into the pocket of his light overcoat, and bade
his companion good-night with a genial flourish of the stick. "Subway to
Brooklyn for mine. Your play will go, all right; don't worry about that,
Mr. Canby. Good-night and good luck, Mr. Canby."

Canby went the other way, marvelling.

It was eleven; and for half an hour the theatres had been releasing
their audiences to the streets;--the sidewalks were bobbing and
fluttering; automobiles cometed by bleating peevishly. Suddenly, through
the window of a limousine, brilliantly lighted within, Canby saw the
face of Wanda Malone, laughing, and embowered in white furs. He stopped,
startled; then he realized that Wanda Malone's hair was not red. The
girl in the limousine had red hair, and was altogether unlike Wanda
Malone in feature and expression.

He walked on angrily.

Immediately a slender girl, prettily dressed, passed him. She clung
charmingly to the arm of a big boy; and to Canby's first glance she was
Wanda Malone. Wrenching his eyes from her, he saw Wanda Malone across
the street getting into a taxicab, and then he stumbled out of the
way of a Wanda Malone who almost walked into him. Wherever there was a
graceful gesture or turn of the head, there was Wanda Malone.

He wheeled, and walked back toward Broadway, and thought he caught a
glimpse of Packer going into a crowded drug-store near the corner. The
man he took to be Packer lifted his hat and spoke to a girl who was
sitting at a table and drinking soda-water, but when she looked up
and seemed to be Wanda Malone with a blue veil down to her nose, Canby
turned on his heel, face-about, and headed violently for home.

When he reached quieter streets his gait slack