It seemed an age must have elapsed before the strain was broken, but in reality it could not have been more than a few seconds. Yet in that time, swift as it was, and unexpected, too, Klein had discovered the reason for the interruption. Metcalfe’s eyes, at the moment of the toast, had fallen upon Delmar’s photograph. And the sight of it had robbed him of all speech! He had betrayed even greater agitation than had Tanner. What did it mean? What could it mean, other than—— Like a snapping of a taut thread the tension was broken. Metcalfe, as if suddenly aroused from a stupor, broke into a hard and forced laugh, and he took up the regular lines of the play. Passing close to him, bearing the tray, Klein noticed that the juvenile man’s fingers were clenched and that he was breathing a trifle faster than normal. Klein was off the scene before the curtain of the act, and was touching up his eyes when Metcalfe came into the dressing room. In a calm and matter-of-fact way Klein sought to bring out the truth of the affair by referring to the incident casually. “Were you trying to reconstruct the second act?” he asked. Metcalfe sank down into his chair and removed his wig. “What are you getting at?” he asked curtly. “Why, that impromptu scene over the toast,” Klein explained. “It was good as far as it went.” The juvenile man’s hands were still trembling as he squared himself in his chair preparatory to removing his make-up. “I—I don’t know what—what came over me. My nerves, I guess.” “You looked as if you’d seen a ghost,” Klein ventured to suggest. Metcalfe flashed him a quick glance, but Klein, bending over his mirror, pretended not to notice it. “I—I guess I did see a ghost,” he wavered. “Maybe I am a fool, and all of that, but if——” He hesitated, daubing his cheeks. “Klein,” he began once more, as if determined to relieve his mind of some weight, “I’ve been upset ever since I joined this company. There is something—something I’d like to talk over with you.” “Fire away,” Klein told him, treating the statement with assumed indifference. “I’m all ears. I suppose one of your mash notes——” “It is nothing like that, Klein,” Metcalfe interrupted gravely. “I’m serious for once.” He paused, slowly unbuttoning his waistcoat. Klein waited expectantly for him to continue, confident that whatever was troubling the juvenile man would have a direct bearing upon Delmar’s photograph. That the photograph had temporarily upset and confused Tanner was not to be questioned. The excuse he had given Klein was obviously a lie. Then, following this, had come Metcalfe’s dramatic scene, which beyond any doubt had been prompted by the same photograph. Yet both men avoided the real issue, and both attributed their lack of self-control to a case of “nerves.” “In the first place,” Metcalfe said, “on the very day I left New York——”