He would lie awake at night, thinking, and his thoughts were far from peaceful. Supposing, after this supreme effort, the play failed? It would mean the loss of everything to him. His capital, his nerve, and his hopes for Mornice would perish at a single blow. “Let it succeed,” he implored, and the words were a prayer. “I want the little girl to have her chance.” They were not healthy thoughts, and they snatched at him all hours of the day and night. In the night especially they would prod him into wakefulness. He would see pictures of the grey, back-street under-world, where the unwanted actors go. They danced before his eyes like green spots with scarlet centres. The strain told, after a while, and he came to rehearsals haggard-eyed and irritable. There is nothing like irritability for getting the worst out of a company—not so much because they resent it as because it makes them nervy and distracts their thoughts. On the day he had his hair cut he felt that his strength had departed indeed. He had arranged that there would be dress-rehearsals for a week, that the company might become accustomed to their clothes. The first of these depressed him as nothing had ever done before. The women’s gowns had cost nearly two hundred and fifty pounds, and, beautiful as they were, they looked woefully out of place on the backs of the Old Cardomay Company. Mellish, who had done his best to achieve the outward appearance of a man-about-town, cut a pathetic figure, despite the variety of his checks. He gave the effect of being arrayed in his Sunday suit, and wore a buttonhole of daffodils in the second act. Eliphalet was conscious of something amiss with most of them, but could not lay his finger on the point of offence. On the whole, the extravagances of wardrobe seemed to cause their wearers added uneasiness, and a more ungainly performance he had never beheld. “What do you think, Manning?” he asked, tentatively, when the curtain fell on the last act. “Fine,” was the stony rejoinder. “That’s a lie,” said Eliphalet very softly. “You’re right, Guv’nor; it is.” “And the truth?” “They’re all adrift—’cept you. They’ll drown you between ’em.” Eliphalet seized him savagely by the arm, and cried: “We have four days more, Manning. We can’t afford to leave it like this. I shall get a producer from London—at any price.” He rushed to the nearest Post Office and wired to Raymond Wakefield, begging him to name his terms to attend a rehearsal of ‘A Man’s Way.’ “If not for terms, then come in pity,” he ended. Wakefield wired to say he would arrive next morning by eleven-thirty. Eliphalet called a full-dress rehearsal, with lights, for two o’clock, and met Wakefield at the station. Even though several years had passed since their last meeting, Eliphalet was struck with the same extraordinary appearance of youthfulness borne by the eminent producer. “I’ve come for love, Mr. Cardomay, and because your wire breathed tragedy. What’s the sorrow?”