'Silence, impudent-face! You are not talking to Radsikoff. I am a Poet, and I demand my rights.' Kloot was silent from sheer surprise. Goldwater was similarly impressed. 'What rights?' he observed more mildly. 'You've had your twenty dollars. And that was too much.' 'Too much! Twenty dollars for the masterpiece of the twentieth century!' 'In the twenty-first century you shall have twenty-one dollars,' said Kloot, recovering. 'Make mock as you please,' replied the poet superbly. 'I shall be living in the fifty-first century even. Poets never die--though, alas! they have to live. Twenty dollars too much, indeed! It is not a dollar a century for the run of the play.' 'Very well,' said Goldwater grimly. 'Give them back. We return your play.' This time it was the poet that was disconcerted. 'No, no, Goldwater--I must not disappoint my printer. I have promised him the twenty dollars to print my Hebrew "Selections from Nietzsche."' 'You take your manuscript and give me my money,' said Goldwater implacably. 'Exchange would be a robbery. I will not rob you. Keep your bargain. See, here is the printer's letter.' He dragged from a tail-pocket a mass of motley manuscripts and yellow letters, and laid them beside the telephone as if to search among them. Goldwater waved a repudiating hand. 'Be not a fool-man, Goldwater.' The poet's carneying forefinger was laid on his nose. 'I and you are the only two people in New York who serve the poetic drama--I by writing, you by producing.' Goldwater still shook his head, albeit a whit appeased by the flattery. Kloot replied for him: 'Your manuscript shall be returned to you by the first dustcart.' Pinchas disregarded the youth. 'But I am willing you shall have only a fortnight's rehearsals. I believe in you, Goldwater. I have always said, "The only genius on the Yiddish stage is Goldwater." Klostermann--bah! He produces not so badly, but act? My grandmother's hen has a better stage presence. And there is Davidoff--a voice like a frog and a walk like a spider. And these charlatans I only heard of when I came to New York. But you, Goldwater--your fame has blown across the Atlantic, over the Carpathians. I journeyed from Cracow expressly to collaborate with you.' 'Then why do you spoil it all?' asked the mollified manager. 'It is my anxiety that Europe shall not be disappointed in you. Let us talk of the cast.' 'It is so early yet.' '"The early bird catches the worm."' 'But all our worms are caught,' grinned Kloot. 'We keep our talent pinned on the premises.' 'I know, I know,' said Pinchas, paling. He saw Mrs. Goldwater tripping on saucily as Ophelia. 'But we don't give all our talent to one play,' the manager reminded him. 'No, of course not,' said Pinchas, with a breath of hope. 'We have to use all our people by turns. We divide our forces. With myself as Hamlet you will have a cast that should satisfy any author.'