He found the players assembled on their tiny stage, hardly larger than the one in the children’s theatre at Community House. The house would seat ninety-nine people only; one more seat, and the Artists’ Theatre would have come within the theatre ordinance and been required to pay a theatre-tax. Officially then, as a theatre, it did not exist. The actors, Felix knew, received no pay; they were lawyers and doctors, painters and poets, business men’s wives and ambitious young women just out of school. The authors of the plays would receive no royalty; the income from seat-sales would not cover the rent of the theatre itself, and the deficit would have to be made up by enthusiasts.... In a manner of speaking, it wasn’t a theatre at all—it was a dream. As soon as he entered the theatre Felix felt its irresistible dream quality. Upon the stage, walking up and down, was the slight, striking, dramatic figure of Gregory Storm—the dreamer whose dream all this was, the man who still, in the years of maturity, was trying to achieve a childish, absurd and delightful impossibility. It was he who had named this enterprise “The Artists’ Theatre”; no one else in Chicago would have been so brave, or so foolish.... He turned, saw Felix, nodded at him, and clapped his hands. “Cast of ‘The Dryad’!” he cried. Three men and a girl stood up. The others left the stage. Felix clambered up over the place where the footlights would have been if Gregory Storm had not passionately disbelieved in footlights. Gregory Storm shook Felix’s hand hastily, and turned to the others. “This is the author, Mr. Fay. Miss Macklin, Mr. Ferguson, Mr. Whipple, Mr. Deedy.” Felix bowed. “We’ll have the scenery.” He clapped his hands again. “Set for ‘The Dryad’!” A man whom Felix recognized as an enterprising young architect appeared at the back, struggling with a tall painted canvas frame.... As the set was put together, Felix felt a genuine thrill of pleasure; it was so completely, and so startlingly, in the spirit of his play. He had feared that he would be given a realistic woodland setting—and that would have shown up the utter artifice of his play. But this was a wood as some artist of the Yellow Book in his gayest mood might have pictured it—a wood that was, after all, a fashionable drawing-room or a perfumed boudoir, set for the graceful and heartless loves of shepherds and shepherdesses dressed in silks and satins.... The young architect grinned at him. “Like it?” he whispered. “I did it myself. Pretty good, I think!” “We had a good deal of difficulty with that little song in your play,” said Gregory Storm. “The one the fat man sings.” He smiled appreciatively. “We set it to two or three old ballad tunes before we got the right one. Would you mind, Mr. Deedy, trying it for us?” Mr. Deedy, who was to take the part of the Banker in the play, stepped forward and sang in a mournful voice: