Arm-in-arm and hugging very close together, they walked to the theatre, and as the illuminated face of the Town Hall clock proved beyond question they were late, there was nothing for it but to run the last hundred yards. Ronald Knight was at the stage-door and was cheered to see them arrive breathless and laughing. Then Eliphalet stooped and planted a hurried kiss on Mornice’s cheek. “God bless you, my boy,” he said almost fiercely to Ronald, and passed through the swing-door toward his dressing-room. He had meant to make a speech on the day he went out of management, and the company, knowing this, grouped themselves on the stage when the curtain fell on the last act. Then, quite naturally, he knew it could not be done. The things about which one really feels have so small a part in speeches. So, when he found himself confronted by the most sympathetic audience before which an actor ever appeared, he learnt that all his art, technique and experience availed nothing. Those dear, honest, familiar faces dimmed as he looked toward them into a grey wet mist. Somewhere in his throat a new pulse started to throb—and throbbed burningly. Eliphalet Cardomay shook his head like a child who is lost. “I—I can’t,” he said. Then, with a feeble, impotent gesture of farewell, he turned away. “Three cheers for him,” gasped Freddie Manning, his face scarlet with emotion. And Eliphalet Cardomay bolted from the theatre. During the performance he had managed to say a few words, individually, to those old corner-stones of his dramatic edifice who, for years and years, had worked the provincial theatres under his managership. That had been hard enough, God knows. Old Kitterson made no bones about it, and frankly howled when Eliphalet gripped him by the hand. Scarcely less reserved was Freddie Manning—the least emotional of creatures. “I’m hating it, Guv’nor,” he said. He kissed all the ladies of the company and had a kind word for each, but Mornice he steadfastly avoided, for there was a limit to his powers of endurance, and he wished to escape without any show of weakness. The last person he spoke to was his dresser. “I won’t sleep at night, sir, for worrying about you and your things. You won’t never be able to look after yourself proper.” “Nonsense,” said Eliphalet. “I shall miss you, of course, but it will come easier after a while. You—you’ve been more than attentive, Potter, and just a little parting gift——” He pressed a five-pound note into the dresser’s hand—a note that Potter secretly replaced in his master’s pocket while helping him, for the last time, into the big fur overcoat. Eliphalet Cardomay’s great farewell tour, with seventy-five pounds a week spent on advertisement, was over and done with, and out of the wreckage he salved four hundred pounds. He did not raise a wail over the loss—he was too game; but in his inner self was a tiny cry of disappointment.