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Canby, feeling a natural prejudice against this personage, glanced uneasily at Talbot Potter’s face and was surprised to find that fine bit of modelling contorted with rage. The sight of this emotion was reassuring, but its source was a mystery, for it had seemed to the playwright that the wasp-waisted youth’s remarks–though horribly damaging to the cheap little Canbys with their cheap little “Roderick Hanscoms”–were on the whole rather flattering to the subject of them, and betokened a real interest in his career.

“Ass!” said Potter.

Canby exhaled a breath of relief. He began to feel that it might be possible to like this man.

“Ass!” said Potter, striding up and down the room. “Ass! Ass! Ass! Ass!”

And Canby felt easier and happier. He foresaw, too, that there would be no cabling to Rostand, a thing he had naively feared, for a moment, as imminent.

Potter halted, bursting into speech less monosyllabic but no less vehement: “Mr. Tinker, did you ever see Mounet-Sully?”

“No.”

“Did you, Mr. Canby?”

“No.”

“Mewnay-Sooyay!” Potter mimicked the pronunciation of his adviser. “‘Mewnay-Sooyay! Of coss I don’t say YOU could ever be another Mewnay-Sooyay!’ Ass! I’ll tell you what Mounet-Sully’s ‘technique’ amounts to, Mr. Tinker. It’s yell! Just yell, yell, yell! Does he think I can’t yell! Why, Packer could open his mouth like a hippopotamus and yell through a part! Ass!”

“Was that young man a-a critic?” Canby asked.

“No!” shouted Potter. “There aren’t any!”

“He writes about theatrical matters,” said Carson Tinker. “Talky-talk writing: ‘the drama’–‘temperament’–‘people of cultivation’–quotes Latin or Italian or something. ‘Technique’ is his star word; he plays ‘technique’ for a hand every other line. Doesn’t do any harm; in fact, I think he does us a good deal of good. Lots of people read that talky-talk writing nowadays. Not in New York, but in road-towns, where they have plenty of time. This fellow’s never against any show much, unless he takes a notion. You slip ‘dolsy far nienty’ or something about Danty or logarithms somewhere into your play, where it won’t delay the action much, and he’ll be for you.”

Canby nodded and laughed eagerly. Tinker seemed to take it for granted that “Roderick Hanscom” was to be produced in spite of “another play I have been considering.”

“There aren’t any critics, I tell you!” Potter stormed. “Mounet-Sully!”

“Well,” said old Tinker quietly, “I’d like to believe it, but people making a living that way have ruined a good many million dollars’ worth of property in this town. Some of it was very good property.” He paused, and added: “Some of it was mine, too.”

“Good property?” said the playwright with fresh uneasiness. “You mean the critics sometimes ruin a good play?”

“How do they know a good play–or good acting?” Tinker returned placidly. “Every play you ever saw in your life, some people in the audience said they thought it was good; some said it was bad. How do critics know any more about it than anybody else? For instance, how can anybody that hasn’t been in the business tell what’s good acting and what’s a good part?”

“But a critic–aren’t critics in the bus–“

“No. They aren’t theatrical people,” said Tinker dryly. “They’re writers.”

“But some of them must have studied from the inside,” Canby urged, feeling that “Roderick Hanscom’s” chances were getting slighter and slighter. “Some of them must have either been managers for a while, or actors–or had plays pro–“

“No,” said Tinker. “If they had they wouldn’t do for critics. They wouldn’t have the heart.”

“They oughtn’t to have so much power!” the young man exclaimed passionately. “Think of a playwright working on his play–two years, maybe–night after night–and then, all in one swoop, these fellows that you say don’t know anything–“

“Power!” Potter laughed contemptuously. “Tinker, you’re in your dotage! Look at what I’ve done: Haven’t I made my way in spite of everything they could do to stifle me? And have I ever compromised for one moment? Haven’t I gone my own way, absolutely?”

“Yes.” Tinker’s face was more cryptic than usual. “Yes, indeed!”