He and one other sat in the shadowy hollow of the orchestra, two obscure little shapes on the floor of the enormous cavern. The other was Talbot Potter's manager, Carson Tinker, a neat, grim, small old man with a definite appearance of having long ago learned that after a little while life will beat anybody's game, no matter how good. He observed the nervousness of the playwright, but without interest. He had seen too many. Young Canby's play was a study of egoism, being the portrait of a man wholly given over to selfish ambitions finally attained, but “at the cost of every good thing in his life,” including the loss of his “honour,” his lady-love, and the trust and affection of his friends. Young Canby had worked patiently at his manuscript, rewriting, condensing, pouring over it the sincere sweat of his brow and the light of his boarding-house lamp during most of the evenings of two years, until at last he was able to tell his confidants, rather huskily, that there was “not one single superfluous word in it,” not one that could possibly be cut, nor one that could be changed without “altering the significance of the whole work.” The moment was at hand when he was to see the vision of so many toilsome hours begin to grow alive. What had been no more than little black marks on white paper was now to become a living voice vibrating the actual air. No wonder, then, that tremors seized him; Pygmalion shook as Galatea began to breathe, and to young Canby it was no less a miracle that his black marks and white paper should thus come to life. “Miss Ellsling!” called the stage-manager. “Miss Ellsling, you're on. You're on artificial stone bench in garden, down right. Mr. Nippert, you're on. You're over yonder, right cen---” “Not at all!” interrupted Talbot Potter, who had taken his seat at a small table near the trough where the footlights lay asleep, like the row of night-watchmen they were. “Not at all!” he repeated sharply, thumping the table with his knuckles. “That's all out. It's cut. Nippert doesn't come on in this scene at all. You've got the original script there, Packer. Good heavens! Packer, can't you ever get anything right? Didn't I distinctly tell you--Here! Come here! Not garden set, at all. Play it interior, same as act second. Look, Packer, look! Miss Ellsling down left, in chair by escritoire. In heaven's name, can you read, Packer?” “Yessir, yessir. I see, sir, I see!” said Packer with piteous eagerness, taking the manuscript the star handed him. “Now, then, Miss Ellsling, if you please--” “I will have my tea indoors,” Miss Ellsling began promptly, striking an imaginary bell. “I will have my tea indoors, to-day, I think, Pritchard. It is cooler indoors, to-day, I think, on the whole, and so it will be pleasanter to have my tea indoors to-day. Strike bell again. Do you hear, Pritchard?” Out in the dimness beyond the stage the thin figure of the new playwright rose dazedly from an orchestra chair.