cause of much sneering and dissatisfaction in theatrical
circles. Crossley, they said, was exclusive, had the swollen head, had
forgotten that only a few years before he had been a cheap little
ticket-seller grateful for a bow from any actor who had ever had his
name up. Crossley insisted that he was not a victim of folie de
grandeur, that, on the contrary, he had become less vain as he had
risen, where he could see how trivial a thing rising was and how
accidental. Said he:

"Why do I shut myself in? Because I'm what I am--a good thing, easy
fruit. You say that men a hundred times bigger than I'll ever be don't
shut themselves up. You say that Mountain, the biggest financier in
the country, sits right out where anybody can go up to him. Yes, but
who'd dare go up to him? It's generally known that he's a cannibal,
that he kills his own food and eats it warm and raw. So he can afford
to sit in the open. If I did that, all my time and all my money would
go to the cheap-skates with hard-luck tales. I don't hide because I'm
haughty, but because I'm weak and soft."

In appearance Mr. Crossley did not suggest his name. He was a tallish,
powerful-looking person with a smooth, handsome, audacious face, with
fine, laughing, but somehow untrustworthy eyes--at least untrustworthy
for women, though women had never profited by the warning. He dressed
in excellent taste, almost conspicuously, and the gay and expensive
details of his toilet suggested a man given over to liveliness. As a
matter of fact, this liveliness was potential rather than actual. Mr.
Crossley was always intending to resume the giddy ways of the years
before he became a great man, but was always so far behind in the
important things to be done and done at once that he was forced to put
off. However, his neckties and his shirts and his flirtations,
untrustworthy eyes kept him a reputation for being one of the worst
cases in Broadway. In vain did his achievements show that he could not
possibly have time or strength for anything but work. He looked like a
rounder; he was in a business that gave endless dazzling opportunities
for the lively life; a rounder he was, therefore.

He was about forty. At first glance, so vivid and energetic was he, he
looked like thirty-five, but at second glance one saw the lines, the
underlying melancholy signs of strain, the heavy price he had paid for
phenomenal success won by a series of the sort of risks that make th