He would read to her again. His sonnet! From the heart--glowing with the fire that even in his triumph he could not forget. She would listen! The third was the “big act”; (there were four in all). All was ready for the artificial triumph that was to follow it--trained ushers, ticket sellers, door man, behind the last row of orchestra seats, clapping like mad. Experienced friends of the management in groups where they could do the most good. Trick curtains, each suggesting, by grouping or movement on the stage, the next. Neuerman wanted eight curtains after the big act. He got them--and five more. For the claques were overwhelmed. A sophisticated audience that had forgotten for once how to be cold-blooded, tears drying unheeded on grizzled cheeks, was on its feet, clapping, stamping, shouting. After the third curtain came the first shouts for “Author.” The shouts grew into an insistent roar. Again and again the curtain rose on the shifting, carefully devised group effects; the audience had been stirred, and it wanted the man whose genius had stirred it. Behind, in the prompt corner, there was some confusion. You couldn't tell that excited mob that Peter Mann hadn't written fifty lines of that cumulatively moving story. It was his play, by contract. The credit was his; and the money. But no one had seen him for months. After the tenth call Neuerman ordered the footlights down and the house-lights up. He wore part of a wrinkled business suit; his collar was a rag; his waistcoat partly unbuttoned. He didn't know where he had thrown his coat. The sweat rolled in rivulets down his fat face. Out front the roar grew louder. Neuerman ordered the house-lights down again and the footlights up. “Here, Grace,” he said, to Miss Herring who stood, in the shirt-waist and short skirt of the part, looking very girlish and utterly dazed--“for God's sake take the author's call.” She shook her head. “You take it,” she replied. “I couldn't say a word--not if it was for my life!” “Me take it!” He was mimicking her, from sheer nervousness. “_Me_ take it? In these clothes?” She laughed a little at this, absently. Flowers had come to her--great heaps of them. She snatched up an armful of long-stemmed roses; buried her face in them. Neuerman waved the curtain up again; took her arm, made her go on. She bowed again, out there, hugging her roses, an excited light in her eyes; and once more backed off. “For God's sake, _say_ something!” cried the manager. She ignored this; bent over and looked through the heaps of flowers for a certain card. It was not there. She pouted--not like her rather experienced self but like the girl she was playing--and hugged the roses again. For the twelfth time the curtain rose. Again she could only bow. Neuerman mopped his forehead; then wrung out his handkerchief. “Somebody say something,” he cried. “Ardrey could do it.” (Ardrey was the leading man.) “Where's Ardrey? Here you--call Mr. Ardrey! Quick!”