After the author had explained to the actor what seemed to him the obvious distribution of the emphasis in this speech, he was able to escape and at last to make his way upon the stage. The scene of the first act of "Touch and Go" was set, and the stage itself was brilliantly lighted, while the auditorium was in absolute darkness. It was at least a minute before Carpenter was able to discern the circle of the balcony, shrouded in the linen draperies that protected its velvet and its gilding from the dust. Here and there in the orchestra chairs were little knots of three or four persons, perhaps twenty or thirty in all. The proscenium boxes yawned blackly. Although it was a warm evening in the early fall, the house struck Carpenter as chill and forbidding. He peered into the darkness to discover the face he was longing to see again. Two men were talking earnestly, seated at a table in the centre of the stage near the footlights. One of these was a short man, with grizzled hair and a masterful manner. This was Sherrington, the stage-manager who had been engaged to produce the play. The other was Harry Brackett, Carpenter's collaborator in its authorship. Just as the new-comer had made out in the dark house the group he was seeking and had bowed to the two ladies comprising it, Harry Brackett caught sight of him. "Well, Will," he cried, "the Stellar Attraction is late, as usual--and we've got lots of work before us to-night, too. Sherrington isn't at all satisfied with the way they do either of the big scenes in the second act; and we've got to look out and keep them all up to their work if we want this to be anything more than a mere 'artistic success.'" "'Artistic success!'" said Sherrington, emphatically; "why, there's money in this thing of yours--big money, too, if we can get all the laughs out of those two scenes of Daisy's in the second act. But it will take good work to get out all the laughs there ought to be, legitimately--and we've got to do it! Every laugh is worth a dollar and a half; that's what I say." "The two scenes in the second act?" inquired Carpenter. "The one with Stark and the one with Miss Marvin, you mean?" "The one with Marvin will be all right, I think," said the stage-manager. "I'm not so sure of that," Harry Brackett interjected; "you insisted on her being engaged, Will, but she is very inexperienced, and I don't know how she'll get through that long scene." "Miss Marvin is very clever," Carpenter declared, eager to defend the girl he was in love with; "and she will look the part to perfection!" "Looking is all very well," Brackett responded, "but it is acting she will have to do in that scene in the second act." "And she will do it too," asserted the stage-manager. "You see, she's got her mother here to-night, and there isn't a sharper old stager anywhere than Kate Shannon Loraine."