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“Good business!” he cried. “Did you see that little run off the stage she made when Miss Ellsling came on? And you saw what he can do when he wants to!”

“He?” Canby echoed. “He?”

“Played for the scene instead of himself. Oh, he can do it! He’s an old hand–got too many tricks in the bag to let her get the piece away from him–but he’s found a girl that can play with him at last, and he’ll use every value she’s got. He knows good property when he sees it. She’s got a pretty good box of tricks herself; stock’s the way to learn ’em, but it’s apt to take the bloom off. It hasn’t taken off any of hers, the darlin’! What do you think, Mr. Canby?”

To Canby, who hardly noticed that this dead old man had come to life, the speech was jargon. The playwright was preoccupied with the fact that Talbot Potter was still on the stage, would continue there until the rather distant end of the act, and that the “ingenue,” after completing the little run at her exit, had begun to study the manuscript of her part, and in that absorption had disappeared through a door into the rear passageway. Canby knew that she was not to be “on” again until the next act, and he followed a desperate impulse.

“See a person,” he mumbled, and went out through the lobby, turned south to the cross-street, proceeded thereby to the stage-door of the theatre, and resolutely crossed the path of the distrustful man who lounged there.

“Here!” called the distrustful man.

“I’m with the show,” said Canby, an expression foreign to his lips and a clear case of inspiration. The distrustful man waved him on.

Wanda Malone was leaning against the wall at the other end of the passageway, studying her manuscript. She did not look up until he paused beside her.

“Miss Malone,” he began. “I have come–I have come–I have-ah–“

These were his first words to her. She did nothing more than look at him inquiringly, but with such radiance that he floundered to a stop. There were only two things within his power to do: he had either to cough or to speak much too sweetly.

“There’s a draught here,” she said, Christian anxiety roused by the paroxysm which rescued him from the damning alternative. “You oughtn’t to stand here perhaps, Mr. Canby.”

“‘Canby?'” he repeated inquiringly, the name seeming new to him. “Canby?”

“You’re Mr. Canby, aren’t you?”

“I meant where–who–” he stammered. “How did you know?”

The stage-manager pointed you out to me yesterday at rehearsal. I was so excited! You’re the first author I ever saw, you see. I’ve been in stock where we don’t see authors.”

“Do you–like it?” he said. “I mean stock. Do you like stock? How much do you like stock? I ah–” Again he fell back upon the faithful old device of nervous people since the world began.

“I’m sure you oughtn’t to stand in this passageway,” she urged.

“No, no!” he said hurriedly. “I love it! I love it! I haven’t any cold. It’s the air. That’s what does it.” He nodded brightly, with the expression of a man who knows the answer to everything. “It’s bad for me.”

“Then you–“

“No,” he said, and went back to the beginning. “I have come–I wanted to come–I wished to say that I wi–” He put forth a manful effort which made him master of the speech he had planned. “I want to thank you for the way you play your part. What I wrote seemed dry stuff, but when you act it, why, then, it seems to be–beautiful!”

“Oh! Do you think so?” she cried, her eyes bedewing ineffably. “Do you think so?”

“Oh–I–oh!–” He got no further, and, although a stranger to the context of this conversation might have supposed him to be speaking of a celebrated commonwealth, Mother of Presidents, his meaning was sufficiently clear to Wanda Malone.

“You’re lovely to me,” she said, wiping her eyes. “Lovely! I’ll never forget it! I’ll never forget anything that’s happened to me all this beautiful, beautiful week!”