uld allow. There was
that immediate bareness and roughness which seems the first
characteristic of the theatre behind the scenes, where the theatre is
one of the simplest and frankest of workshops, in which certain effects
are prepared to be felt before the footlights. Nothing of the glamour of
the front is possible; there is a hard air of business in everything;
and the work that goes to the making of a play shows itself the severest
toil. Figures now came and went in the twilight beyond the reach of the
gas in the door-keeper's booth, but rapidly as if bent upon definite
errands, and with nothing of that loitering gayety which is the imagined
temperament of the stage.

Louise and Maxwell were to see Grayson first in his private office, and
while their names were taken in, the old door-keeper gave them seats on
the Mourners' Bench, a hard wooden settee in the corridor, which he said
was the place where actors wanting an engagement waited till the manager
sent word that he could see them. The manager did not make the author
and his wife wait, but came for them himself, and led the way back to
his room. When he gave them seats there, Maxwell had the pleasure of
seeing that Louise made an excellent impression with the magnate, of
whom he had never quite lost the awe we feel for the master of our
fortunes, whoever he is. He perceived that her inalienable worldly
splendor added to his own consequence, and that his wife's air of
_grande dame_ was not lost upon a man who could at least enjoy it
artistically. Grayson was very polite to her, and said hopefuller things
about the play than he had yet said to Maxwell, though he had always
been civil about its merits. He had a number of papers before him, and
he asked Louise if she had noticed their friendliness. She said, yes,
she had seen some of those things, but she had supposed they were
authorized, and she did not know how much to value them.

Grayson laughed and confessed that he did not practice any concealments
with the press when it was a question of getting something to the public
notice. "Of course," he said, "we don't want the piece to come in on
rubbers."

"What do you mean?" she demanded, with an ignorant joy in the phrase.

"That's what we call it when a thing hasn't been sufficiently heralded,
or heralded at all. We have got to look after that part of it, you
know."

"Of course, I am not complaining, though I think all that's dreadful."

The manager assented