"Am I?" he remarked. "There's one thing you can bet on. If they put me on a throne to-day they are liable to yank me off to-morrow." "And how's your own play getting along?" "Don't!" he winced. "Let us go to the Snail." In the cozy recesses of the Escargot d'Or, near the Central Markets, he unraveled the mysteries of the "star system" which had made him famous. "It's the opposite of all we ever believed," he said, while the mussels and shell-fish were being heaped up before him. "Good-by to Caillavet and his rules. Good-by, Terror and Pity. Good-by, dear French farce. Give me a pretty girl with a smile, an actor with charm, and I will defy our old friend Aristotle." "Is it as easy as that?" I asked, in amazement. "No," said he, "it's confoundedly difficult to find the girl with the smile and the actor with charm. It is pure accident. There are players of international reputation who can't draw a dollar. There are chits of chorus-girls who can play a night of sixteen hundred dollars in Youngstown, Ohio." "And the play doesn't matter?" I inquired. "There you've got me," said Frohman, as the crepes Suzette arrived in their chafing-dish. "My interest makes me pretend that the play's the thing. I congratulate foreign authors on a week of fourteen thousand dollars in Chicago, and they go away delighted. But I know, all the time, that of this sum the star drew thirteen thousand nine hundred dollars, and the author the rest." "To what do you attribute such a state of affairs?" "Feminine curiosity. God bless the women." "Are there no men in your audiences?" I asked. "Only those whom the women take," said Frohman. "The others go to musical shows. Have some more crepes Suzette." "But what do the critics say?" I persisted. "My dear Paul," said Frohman, solemnly, "they call me a 'commercial manager' because I won't play Ibsen or Maeterlinck. They didn't help me when I tried for higher game. I had years of poverty, years of privation. To-day I take advantage of a general feminine desire to view Miss Tottie Coughdrop; and, to the critics, I'm a mere Bulgarian, a 'commercial manager.' So was Lester Wallack when he admitted 'The World' to his classic theater. So was Augustin Daly when he banished Shakespeare in favor of 'The Great Ruby.' If the critics want to reform the stage, let them begin by reforming the public." In his cabin on the _Lusitania_ he showed me a mass of yellow manuscript, scribbled over with hieroglyphics in blue pencil. "That's my play," he said, very simply. "Shall I take it home and read it?" I asked. "No," he replied. "I will try it on Barrie and bring it back in better shape." So he shook hands and sailed with his cherished drama, which reposes to-day, not on the summit of Mont Blanc, but at the bottom of the Irish Sea. XVI "C. F." AT REHEARSALS