“And you start Elliott to write over the libretto at once,” she commanded, “and see that that song and dance clown” (the comedian) “never comes on the stage when I'm on, if it can be helped, or I won't go on at all. That's settled!” The comedian and I left the stage door together. The actress's cab was waiting at the opposite side of the dark alley-like street upon which the stage door opened. This street or court, stretching its gloomy way from a main street, is a place of tall warehouses, rear walls, and bad paving. The electric light at its point of junction with the main street does not penetrate half-way to the stage entrance, and the blackness thereabout is diluted with the rays of the lonely, indifferent gas-lamp that projects above the old wooden door. Farther on, an old-fashioned street-lamp marks the place where the alley turns to wind about until it eventually reaches another main street. This dark region, the feeble lamp above the stage door, the shadows opposite, have a peculiar charm, especially at night. One would not think that within that door is a short corridor leading to the mystic realm which the people “in front” idealize into a wonderful inaccessible country, the playworld. Back here, especially on a rainy night and before the playworld's inhabitants begin to sally forth to partake of terrestrial beer and sandwiches, one seems millions of miles away from the crowds of men and women in the theatre and from the illumined street in front. The ordinary world, when passing this strange place, peers in curiously from the main street. Sometimes folks wait at the corner of the street to see the stage people come out. If the piece is a burlesque or a comic opera, much life moves in the darkness back here. Light comes from the up-stairs windows of the theatre, the dressing rooms of the subordinate players being up there. Snatches of song from feminine throats, mere trills sometimes, isolated fragments of melody, break into the silence. These are always numerous during the half-hour after the performance and before the actors have left the theatre. Chorus girls in ulsters emerge in troops, usually by twos, from the door beneath the light, and it is constantly opening and shutting. In the gloom opposite the door hover a few bold youths, suddenly become timid, smoking cigarettes and trying to look like men of the world. As the comedian and I came forth, one of these young men struck a match to light a cigarette. The momentary flash attracted my eye, and I saw in the farthest shadow, with his gaze upon the stage door, my man of the restaurant, and the manuscript, and the gallery. If possible, he looked more haggard than before, and, as it was cold, he shivered perceptibly. “Whom can he be waiting for, I wonder?” I said, aloud. The comedian, thinking that I alluded to the cabman, half-asleep upon his seat, replied, as he turned up the collar of his overcoat: