'It is I, the author!' said Pinchas, struggling up through clouds like some pagan deity. Hamlet's face grew as inky as his cloak. 'And what do you want?' 'What do I want?' repeated Pinchas, in sheer amaze. Kloot, in his peaked cap, emerged from the wings munching a sandwich. 'Sure, there's Shakespeare!' he said. 'I've just been round to the cafe to find you. Got this sandwich there.' 'But this--this isn't the first rehearsal,' stammered Pinchas, a jot appeased. 'The first dress-rehearsal,' Kloot replied reassuringly. 'We don't trouble authors with the rough work. They stroll in and put on the polish. Won't you come on the stage?' Unable to repress a grin of happiness, Pinchas stumbled through the dim parterre, barking his shins at almost every step. Arrived at the orchestra, he found himself confronted by a chasm. He wheeled to the left, to where the stage-box, shrouded in brown holland, loomed ghostly. 'No,' said Kloot, 'that door's got stuck. You must come round by the stage-door.' Pinchas retraced his footsteps, barking the smooth remainder of his shins. He allowed himself a palpitating pause before the lobby posters. His blood chilled. Not only was Ignatz Levitsky starred in equal type, but another name stood out larger than either: _Ophelia_ .. .. .. _Fanny Goldwater._ His wrath reflaming, he hurried round to the stage-door. He pushed it open, but a gruff voice inquired his business, and a burly figure blocked his way. 'I am the author,' he said with quiet dignity. 'Authors ain't admitted,' was the simple reply. 'But Goldwater awaits me,' the poet protested. 'I guess not. Mr. Kloot's orders. Can't have authors monkeying around here.' As he spoke Goldwater's voice rose from the neighbouring stage in an operatic melody, and reduced Pinchas's brain to chaos. A despairing sense of strange plots and treasons swept over him. He ran back to the lobby. The doors had been bolted. He beat against them with his cane and his fists and his toes till a tall policeman persuaded him that home was better than a martyr's cell. Life remained an unintelligible nightmare for poor Pinchas till the first night--and the third act--of the Yiddish 'Hamlet.' He had reconciled himself to his extrusion from rehearsals. 'They fear I fire Ophelia,' he told the cafe. But a final blow awaited him. No ticket reached him for the premiere; the boxes he had promised the cafe did not materialize, and the necessity of avoiding that haunt of the invited cost him several meals. But that he himself should be refused when he tried to pass in 'on his face'--that authors should be admitted neither at the stage door nor at the public door--this had not occurred to him as within the possibilities of even theatrical humanity. 'Pigs! Pigs! Pigs!' he shrieked into the box office. 'You and Goldwater and Kloot! Pigs! Pigs! Pigs! I have indeed cast my pearls before swine. But I will not be beholden to them--I will buy a ticket.'