"Before I got to the gate where the star-stuff passes through?" Selma Cross answered laughingly. "That was four years ago. I had been to him many times before he let me in. His chair squeaked under him. He looked at me first as if he were afraid I would spring at him. I told him what I could do, and he kept repeating that he didn't know it and New York didn't know it. I said I would show New York, but unfortunately I had to show him first. He screwed up his face and stared at me, as if I were startlingly original in my ugliness. I know he could hear my heart beat. "'I can't do anything for you, Miss Gross,' he said impatiently, but in spite of himself, he added, 'Come to-morrow.' You see, I had made him think, and that hurt. He knew something of my work all right, and wondered where he would put a big-mouthed, clear-skinned, yellow-eyed amazon. The next day, he kept me waiting in the reception-room until I could have screamed at the half-dressed women on the walls. "'I don't know exactly why I asked you to come again,' was his greeting when the door finally opened to me. 'What was it, once more, that you mean to do?' "'I mean to be the foremost tragedienne,' I said. "'Sit down. Tragedy doesn't bay.' "'I shall make it pay.' "'Um-m. How do you know? Some brivate vire of yours?' "'I can show you that I shall make it pay.' "'My Gott, not here! We will go to the outskirts.' "And he meant it, Paula. It was mid-winter. He took me to a little summer-theatre up Lenox way. The place had not been open since Thanksgiving. Vhruebert sat down in the centre of the frosty parquet, shivering in his great coat. You know he's a thin-lipped, smile-less little man, but not such a dead soul as he looks. He leaks out occasionally through the dollar-varnish. Can you imagine a colder reception? Vhruebert sat there blowing out his breath repeatedly, seemingly absorbed in the effect the steam made in a little bar of sunlight which slanted across the icy theatre. That was my try-out before Vhruebert. I gave him some of Sudermann, Boker, and Ibsen. He raised his hand finally, and when I halted, he called in a bartender from the establishment adjoining, and commanded me to give something from Camille and Sapho. I would have murdered him if he had been fooling me after that. The bartender shivered in the cold. "'What do you think of that, Mr. Vite-Apron?' Vhruebert inquired at length. He seemed to be warmer. "'Hot stuff,' said the man. 'It makes your coppers sizzle.' "The criticism delighted Vhruebert. 'Miss Gross, you make our goppers sizzle,' he exclaimed, and then ordered wine and told me to be at his studio to-morrow at eleven. That was the real winning," Selma Cross concluded. "To-night I put the crown on it."