Darley was a small man, with a shock of red hair and intensely blue eyes which gleamed sometimes with the light of an almost maniacal fury. It was this uncontrolled temper which kept him out of London: at his job, the job of infusing energy and “go” into bored chorus girls and of supplying spontaneity and drollery to comedians who had neither spontaneity nor drollery of their own, he was masterly when he kept his temper. A stage manager needn’t suffer fools gladly, but he must suffer them suavely, he must hide his sufferings and must cajole when his every instinct is to curse, and Darley was a touring stage manager instead of a London “producer” because he simply could not roar them as ’twere any nightingale and London players were too well established not to be able effectually to resent his Eccles’ vein: the strollers were not. He read Drayton’s letter through. “Where is she?” he asked. “Why, here,” said the doorkeeper. “But,” said Mr. Darley and then “Christ!” he cried, and bit through his pipe. That often happened: he carried sealing was in his pocket for plugging the hole. “Comes to a theater at eight in the morning and dresses like a scullery maid’s night out. What’ll they send me next? I suppose you _are_ what they’ve sent me? What’s your name?” “Mary Arden.” He consulted the advice note of these extraordinary goods. “That’s right,” he admitted. “Arden! Whom did you see as Rosalind?” Mary Ellen blushed: he seemed to her to read her secrets. “And me a man that respects Shakespeare,” he said. “There’s one line of the Banished Duke you may remember. ‘Sweet are the uses of adversity.’ If you don’t remember the line, you’re going to, Miss Mary Arden. You chose the name. I don’t know that I don’t choose to make you worthy of it.” “Oh, will you?” she cried. “You’ve got no sense of humor,” he said. “Come on the stage and we’ll see what you have got. It’ll be like going water-finding in the Sahara. Can you read music?” “Yes,” she said. “Then be looking at those songs. There’s a piano in the orchestra. I’m going down to it.”