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Rieger set his foot upon the step and rested his left forearm upon his knee, and attitude comfortable for street debate. “Admitting the truth of that for the sake of argument, and only for the moment, because I don’t for one instant accept such a jesuitism–“

“Yes,” said Canby dreamily. “Yes.” And, with not only apparent but genuine unconsciousness of this one-time friend’s existence, he turned and walked back into the lobby, and presently was vaguely aware that somebody near the street doors of the theatre seemed to be in a temper. Somebody kept shouting “Swell-headed pup!” and “Go to the devil!” at somebody else repeatedly, but finally went away, after reaching a vociferous climax of even harsher epithets and instructions.

The departure of this raging unknown left the lobby quiet; Canby had gone near to the inner doors. Listening fearfully, he heard through these a murmurous baritone cadencing: Talbot Potter declaiming the inwardness of “Roderick Hanscom”; and then–oh, bells of Elfland faintly chiming!–the voice of Wanda Malone!

He pressed, trembling, against the doors, and went in.

Talbot Potter and Wanda Malone stood together, the two alone in the great hollow space of the stage. The actors of the company, silent and remote, watched them; old Tinker, halfway down an aisle, stood listening; and near the proscenium two workmen, tools in their hands, had paused in attitudes of arrested motion. Save for the voices of the two players, the whole vast cavern of the theatre was as still as the very self of silence. And the stirless air that filled it was charged with necromancy.

Rehearsal is like the painted canvas without a frame; it is more like a plaster cast, most like of all to the sculptor’s hollow moulds. It needs the bronze to bring a statue to life, and it needs the audience to bring a play to life. Some glamour must come from one to the other; some wind of enchantment must blow between them–there must be a magic spell. But these two actors had produced the spell without the audience.

And yet they were only reading a wistful little love-scene that Stewart Canby had written the night before.

Two people were falling in love with each other, neither realizing it. And these two who played the lovers had found some hidden rhythm that brought them together in one picture as a chord is one sound. They played to each other and with each other instinctively; Talbot Potter had forgotten “the smile” and all the mechanism that went with it. The two held the little breathless silences of lovers; they broke these silences timidly, and then their movements and voices ran together like waters in a fountain. A radiance was about them as it is about all lovers; they were suffused with it.

To Stewart Canby, watching, they seemed to move within a sorcerer’s circle of enchantment. Upon his disturbed mind there was dawning a conviction that these inspired mummers were beings apart from him, knowing things he never could know, feeling things he never could feel, belonging to another planet whither he could never voyage, where strange winds blew and all things lived and grew in a light beyond his understanding. For the light that shone in the faces of these two was “the light that never was, on sea or land.”

It had its blessing for him. From that moment, if he had known it, this play, which was being born of so many parents, was certain of “success,” of “popularity,” and of what quality of renown such things may bring. And he who was to be called its author stood there a Made Man, unless some accident befell.

Miss Ellsling spoke and came forward, another actor with her. The scene was over. There was a clearing of throats; everybody moved. The stage-carpenter and his assistant went away blinking, like men roused from deep sleep. The routine of rehearsal resumed its place; and old Tinker, who had not stirred a muscle, rubbed the back of his neck suddenly, and came up the aisle to Canby.