s gravely
polite, and, to those who knew him if they had overheard, amusingly
commonplace in his conversation. He understood them better than they
did themselves, and made no mistakes. The women smiled on him, but the
men were suspicious and shy of him until they saw that he was quite as
shy of the women; and then they made him a confidant, and told him all
their woes and troubles, and exhibited all their little jealousies and
ambitions, in the innocent hope that he would repeat what they said to
Lester. They were simple, unconventional, light-hearted folk, and Van
Bibber found them vastly more entertaining and preferable to the
silence of the deserted club, where the matting was down, and from
whence the regular _habitues_ had departed to the other side or to
Newport. He liked the swing of the light, bright music as it came to
him through the open door of the dressing-room, and the glimpse he
got of the chorus people crowding and pushing for a quick charge up
the iron stairway, and the feverish smell of oxygen in the air, and
the picturesque disorder of Lester's wardrobe, and the wigs and
swords, and the mysterious articles of make-up, all mixed together on
a tray with half-finished cigars and autograph books and newspaper
"notices."

And he often wished he was clever enough to be an artist with the
talent to paint the unconsciously graceful groups in the sharply
divided light and shadow of the wings as he saw them. The brilliantly
colored, fantastically clothed girls leaning against the bare brick
wall of the theatre, or whispering together in circles, with their
arms close about one another, or reading apart and solitary, or
working at some piece of fancy-work as soberly as though they were in
a rocking-chair in their own flat, and not leaning against a scene
brace, with the glare of the stage and the applause of the house just
behind them. He liked to watch them coquetting with the big fireman
detailed from the precinct engine-house, and clinging desperately to
the curtain wire, or with one of the chorus men on the stairs, or
teasing the phlegmatic scene-shifters as they tried to catch a
minute's sleep on a pile of canvas. He even forgave the prima donna's
smiling at him from the stage, as he stood watching her from the
wings, and smiled back at her with polite cynicism, as though he did
not know and she did not know that her smiles were not for him, but
to disturb some more interested one in the front row. And so,