When she had passed the familiar limping figure of the guardian of the stage door, and had caught the sound of the helter-skelter preparations behind the curtains—the ring of hammers, the hoarse shouts into the rafters, the green-and-gold filmy sheen of the scenery, the groups in costume, chattering in the wings, the busy black-hatted, coatless stage-hands tearing about—DorÉ felt that tingling of the nerves that comes to the crutched veteran when the regiment passes. She adored this life with a keen excited zest. Its unrealities were vitally real, its Lilliputian sultans and pashas great potentates. She adored it—but she was not yet decided. To have been certain of succeeding would have seemed to her the fullest of life; but she was not so blinded by the dazzling light of success as not to perceive clearly the barrenness of its mediocrity and the horror of its failure.

She passed into the theater, which seemed to swallow her up in its impenetrable embrace. She stood a moment, peering into the darkness, seeing only a great red eye above, ghostly draperies in the galleries, and in the mysterious catacombs below a vague flitting figure stumbling to a seat. Then, her eyes growing accustomed to the obscurity, she put out her hand and felt her way along the empty seats, with their damp musty shrouds.

The curtain was up on the set for the first act, which had been ended ten minutes before. They had been rehearsing since noon; the probabilities were they would continue long past midnight. On the stage, O'Reilly of the "props" was swearing hoarsely at the calcium light in the ceilings, throwing on reds and blues with a rapid succession that blinded the eyes. Baum was cursing the scene-shifters, clamoring for more verdure. Trimble, the stage-manager, was in the center of the stage, rearranging a scene with the soubrette and the heavy comic. In the house itself, back of the orchestra, in the dim lobby with its dungeon reflections from the street, the chorus girls and men were busily rehearsing a new step that had just been given them, humming as they balanced on their toes, took hands and twined about their partners, who, with a final twirl, sank on their knees to receive them. As the step was complicated, everywhere murmurs of expostulation and protest were heard:

"Stupid! Not that way!"

"One, two—one, two—one, two, three!"

"Catch me."

"No! I go first."

"Gee! what an ice-wagon!"

"To the left, I told ye!"

Dodo, dodging swaying bodies and arms extended in swimming gestures, found the center aisle, and her eyes acquiring more vision, began to explore the obscurities. Above the orchestra, Felix Brangstar, his head crowned with a slouch hat, stripped to shirt and crossed pink suspenders, angry, hot and on edge, was screaming to the flutes orders to transpose certain measures. O'Reilly continued to shout:

"Blind that! Throw on the whites. Damn you, will you throw on your whites? Hold that!"

Trimble, on the stage, was taking the part of the soubrette, skipping about the heavy comic, coquetting and dodging under his arm, while the air was charged with electric comments:

"Lower away! More—more!"

"Is Blainey here yet?"

"Where's Benton?"

"Switch that table over!"

"Throw on your borders!"

"B flat, then the chord of A."

"That's cut out. Yes—yes!"

"Try that curtain again."

"Bring it down slow. No! God! Carey, do you call that slow? Again!"

The piece was a truly fairy-like creation of a modern Offenbach, romantic in libretto, distinguished and delicate in music, a true operetta of the sort that ten years from now will take its just place as a work of art, no longer subject to the mutilations and humiliations that now attend such Americanizations into the loosely tied vaudeville numbers justly termed comic opera.

At this moment some one touched DorÉ on the arm, and looking up, she beheld Roderigo Sanderson. In the shadow she perceived nothing but the flash of a diamond stick-pin and the white sheen of his collar, while an odor of perfume distilled itself from the handkerchief he wore in his sleeve and the heavy curls on his forehead.

"You here?"

"T. B. wants to see me," he answered, giving Blainey, with the American passion for intimacy, the initials under which he was known from one end of the Rialto to the other. He took a seat back of her, leaning over her shoulder, speaking in a guarded tone in the mezzo-Anglican accent which he had almost acquired.

"It's uncommon good, you know. Saw it in Vienna. A gem! Trimble has really staged it jolly well. Sada Quichy—they've imported her, you know—really knows a bit about singing as well as dancing. If they'd put it on as it is now, it would go big—by jove, it would be a revolution! But they won't. The slaughter-house gets a chance at it to-day. You'll see what's left after T. B. gets his meat-ax into it!"

"Who's in the stage-box?" said DorÉ curiously.

"The silent partners," said Sanderson, with a laugh. "Look at the brutes! They're in a fog—in a panic! They already see their money flowing in a gutter. Never mind! they'll get a bit more cheery when T. B. begins his popularizing. It'll be quite amusing. I always get to these executions. It's a brutal appetite, but it sort of consoles one, you know!"

In the box, the silent partners, Guntz, Borgfeldt and Keppelman, suddenly enriched commission agents from the Central West, new to the dishabille of the theater, sat motionless, three black, ill-smelling cigars on parade, three enormous bodies, tortured by tight collars, tight vests, tight chairs, each derby set over one ear to shade the fat folds of the jowled head. Sanderson had made no mistake: the exquisite and melodious first act had left them absolutely petrified with horror.

Sanderson, au courant, continued his exposition after a preparatory glance around the stalls.

"They say they've made millions. How the deuce did L. and B." (the theatrical firm of Lipswitch and Berger) "ever entice them into it? They say they're back of the firm for a third in everything! I'd give a good deal, now, to see the contract those bandits drew up for mutual protection! Jove! that would be a curiosity!"

At that moment, when the stage was in a bedlam, with the cross-fire of the stage-manager coaxing on the soubrette, Brangstar furiously reprimanding the little polyglot tenor, who sang of "lof," and was insufferably pleased with his slender legs, Baum moving indifferently in the confusion, giving ideas for the readjustment of the ravine and the bridge, O'Reilly darkening the blue lights to try the effect of dawn, despite the complaints of the dressmaker, who was defending her costumes and endeavoring to save the hussar boots of the chorus girls by a bolder rearrangement of the draperies—in the midst of this inferno, Blainey came shouldering in, the reverberations of his deep bass stilling the uproar.

"First act, now. Get at it! Don't bring me in here, O'Reilly, for a rehearsal on lights. Ring down your curtain. Gus, want to hear that overture! Let's get at it, boys!"

"All on stage for first curtain!"

Instantly there was a scurrying of the chorus from the lobby down the stage aisle; the dressmaker went hurriedly over the footlights, via a box; the curtain slowly settled; Brangstar climbed to his chair; and the voice of O'Reilly floated out in a final curse at the calcium lights.

"Blind your blues and clear slow. Pete, bring it on slow this time! Do you get me? Do you get me?"

And from above, the voice of the labor union, unruffled, neither to be coaxed nor driven, came impudently down:

"Sure I get you!"

"Overture, now. Then go through the first act. No stops!" said Blainey, lumbering up the aisle.

Against the firefly lights of the orchestra his figure showed like a great barrel, short legs and short arms, with the sense of brute power in the blocked head sunk in the shoulders. He came to where they sat, shading his eyes. Sanderson stood up abruptly, at attention.

"Hello, kid!" he said, perceiving DorÉ.

"Hello, Blainey!"

"See you after first act," he said, leaning over the chairs until they groaned, to take her hand in his enveloping grasp. "Who's that with you—the judge? Oh, Sanderson! What are you—oh, yes, I remember. Judge, glad you came; I want your opinion!"

At this moment Massingale came down from the lobby and took a seat beside DorÉ, while Blainey, readjusting his soft black, broad-brimmed hat with a nervous revolving motion, sauntered on, impatient at the scraping of the violins and the preparatory pumping of the horns. Sanderson, at a nod from Blainey, had followed him into the lobby.

"Surprised to see me here?" said Massingale, taking his seat. "You know, I turn up everywhere. I'm one of those who circulate. I came with Sada Quichy—she's great fun!"

In fact, in New York three classes are privileged at every door—privileged because they have the power to make themselves feared: the politician in office; the representative of the press; and the judge who, at a word, can unloose the terrors of both the others.

"Don't forget what you told me yesterday," she said, turning to him directly, haunted by the malice in his eyes when he had seen her handed down from Sassoon's automobile.

"What did I tell you?"

"That you would not misunderstand me!"

"I don't!" he said, after an ineffectual attempt to see her face. "But—are you strong enough to play the game you are playing?"

"Sassoon?"

"Yes, Sassoon!"

She thought of him, ruffled and rebellious, forced to accompany her to the stage entrance. She held him in slight respect.

"Pooh! Sassoon!" She had a feeling that this man already had her confidence, that she could talk freely with him. "Harrigan Blood, yes; but not Sassoon!"

"You are wrong about Sassoon," he said quietly. "It is not the clever man that is difficult to manage; it is the relentless one! That's Sassoon!"

"Did you call yesterday—to warn me?" she said, turning to him.

"No; moralizing is not my forte," he said, shaking his head. "You are unusual. I should like to watch—your progress!"

"You like to be behind the scenes?"

"Adore it!"

"I wonder just what you think of me," she said pensively. "Have you decided what I am to become?"

"Yes."

She looked up, startled.

"What?"

"Oh, not now—later; some time when we can really talk."

She wished him to invite her, but he was one of those who had the rare instinct of making women believe they were pursuing him. She was silent, thinking, too, of Sada Quichy, doubly resolved to steal him from her.

"Very well," she said suddenly; "we'll dine together. They'll go on here till midnight. We can bring back some sandwiches and cold chicken for the prima donna." But, in her mind, she was resolved that, once they were at dinner, she would carry him off boldly, Sada Quichy or not.

"Splendid!" he said laconically, and prepared himself for the overture, that was being announced by a vigorous lashing of the conductor's stand.

Blainey had settled his body a short way in front of them, ears pricked for the commercially vital waltz motif.

But in the present overture this essential did not at once appear. The operetta, which had been given the name of The Red Prince, was a fantastic romance of Hungary, strangely endowed with an intelligible plot, and this fresh presentation of wild dancing melodies, passionate strains of melancholy and yearning, abandoned delight and fierce exultation, was summarized in the overture.

Massingale, who was an amateur of music, bent forward, breathing full, murmuring his approbation. DorÉ too felt strangely lifted from herself, leaping along perilous heights, striving with invisible windy shapes, that caught her and whirled her, with closed eyes and bated lips, in giddy whirlpools or sudden languorous calms. All the instincts that yesterday, in the change of the year, had vibrated to melancholy, now suddenly seemed to awake with the sufficiency of the instant. A fig for the future! She had a need of the present, of the day, of the hour, gloriously, deliciously stirred from blank realities. Her breath came quick, the little nostrils quivered, and glancing at Massingale's aristocratic forehead and jaw, she found him more than interesting—strong, virile, fascinating in the chained-up impulses which a sudden wild burst of the czardas brought glowing to his eyes.

The overture ceased amid a murmur of approbation; she moved a little way from the shoulder she had instinctively approached.

"Take up that waltz again," said Blainey instantly.

Brangstar, as if warned of what was coming, rebelliously gave the signal. The motif occurred in the middle of the overture, directly after the czardas. It was a tum-ti-tum but undeniably catchy affair.

"Stop there!" Blainey rose and moved into the aisle. "Cut out all that follows. No grand opera stuff—we don't want it! End with that waltz. Fake it. Play it once pianissimo, fiddles; second time louder—bring in your horns. Then let go with your brass. Cut loose. Soak it to 'em! Start it up, Gus!"

Brangstar, who had given three fretful weeks to this beloved production, musician at heart, loathing his servitude to Mammon, seeing in the present work of art his opportunity to emerge, to do the true, the big thing, raised his fists in horror. He had either to burst into tears or swear. Swear he did, damning Blainey, Lipswitch, the whole gang of Pharisees and infidels he served, calling them every name his rage flung to his lips, vowing he never would be a party to such an atrocity.

Blainey, composed, allowed him to vent his fury, rather admiring his manner. Brangstar was a valuable man, a blooded race-horse harnessed to a delivery-wagon.

"You know your music, Gus; I know my public!" he said finally. "What's going to make this opera is just one thing—what you can get under the skin of your audience! We'll soak that waltz at 'em until every mother's son of them goes out whistling it—till the whole town whistles it! That's success, and I know it, and you know it! Now, get at it!"

When the overture had been repeated as he had ordered, Guntz, Borgfeldt and Keppelman began to warm up and to slap one another with delight, while from the recesses of the theater the shrill whistle of the ushers was heard continuing the catchy:

Blainey, not insensible to dramatic effects, indicated the box, where joy now reigned, pursed his lips and nodded knowingly to Massingale.

The execution continued in the first act. The waltz appeared only in the third. Blainey put it forward into the first, arranged for the comics to give a light twist to it in the second, and built it up again in the third, with all the resources of the chorus and repeated encores.

At each moment he stopped the progress of the act:

"Too pretty, pretty! Never go! Cut it!"

"Throw in some gags, there."

"Rush it—rush it!"

"Explode something, there."

"Trimble, got to get your chorus in here. Rush 'em in!"

"Oh, that's enough atmosphere!"

"The public wants dancing!"

"All right! Strike for the second act!"

The curtain rolled down and up, and the scene-shifters flung themselves on the ravine. Brangstar went out to a saloon, strewing curses; Guntz, Borgfeldt and Keppelman followed to celebrate; and Blainey, moving up to Massingale, said, with a shrewd twinkle:

"Well, Judge, how do you like the first act?"

"Tim, if I had you before me I'd send you up for ten years!"

"Not if you had your money behind it, you wouldn't," said Blainey good-humoredly. "Art be damned. I'm here to make money—yes, as every one else is, in this town! I know what the public wants, and I soak it to 'em. Why, this show wouldn't run six nights on a South Troy circuit!"

At this moment some one whispered to him that Sada Quichy was in hysterics.

"What's the matter with Sadie, anyhow?" said Blainey, shrugging his shoulders. "What's she kicking about? She gets twenty weeks, whether we smash or not. I say, Judge, go and jolly her up a bit. Tell her she's got a grand part! I want to talk business with this little girl."

And without concerning himself further, he led the way to his private office.

DorÉ followed quietly. During the last two hours she had been balancing on various emotions. The first glamour of the intoxicating overture had been shattered. She looked on with sober eyes at this spectacle of the theater reduced to its materialistic verities. She was too imaginative not to perceive the outrages committed in the name of the box-office, and too keen not to credit Blainey's logic. The fat idol-like figures of Guntz, Borgfeldt and Keppelman were realities, too; she would have to deal with that type, too—many of that type—if she chose to continue. And she had remained in long periods of absorption, scarcely hearing the remarks Massingale whispered to her, wondering, trying to see into the future, asking herself if this were to be the solution, and, if it were, how to play it. Musing thus, she continued to watch Blainey closely, wondering. Blainey and Harrigan Blood were of the same tribe; they could not be fed on sugar-plums!

The office was a comfortable, pleasantly lighted room, in the greatest disorder possible. Blainey swept aside a litter of papers, and sank into a huge upholstered chair, studying DorÉ, who vaulted to a seat on the desk.

Seen in the daylight, his head seemed to have been scraped and roughened by the long buffeting of adversity and the rough passage upward. The ears that leaped from the solid head, the sharp pointed nose with large nostrils, the wide mouth of a great fish, the shaggy brows and eyes of the fighter, the thin gray cockatoo rise of hair on the forehead as if grasped by an invisible hand—all had about them the signs of the battler, whose defiant motto might appropriately have been: "Don't bump me!"

Blainey glanced at half a dozen telegrams, news from productions scattered over the country, and raised his glance again.

"You're not mixed up with Roderigo Sanderson, are you?"

"Who?"

She had taken off her fur toque with a charming gesture of intimacy, and was arranging her hair in the opposite mirror, her feet swinging merrily.

"Sanderson."

"Did you see who brought me here?" she said impertinently. The answer saved the actor an engagement. With Blainey she assumed always the disdain of a woman of the world.

"Don't get mixed up with actors," he persisted, a note of jealousy in his voice. "Steer clear!"

"Managers are safer, you mean!" she said, laughing at him.

That was not his meaning, but he continued:

"I don't have to tell you much, do I, kid?"

"Not much, Blainey."

"That was Sassoon with you, eh?"

"Albert Edward himself, Blainey," she answered, with an accented note of pride. She knew the man she was dealing with. Brutal and contemptuous to innocence, but bowing down with a sneaking admiration to the woman who played the game and won out, not for a moment did he doubt that she was of the shrewdest and the most unprincipled. And this conviction stood like a shield before her in this room where other women had gone in with a shrug.

"Sassoon, eh?" he said admiringly, and he gave vent to a long whistle. "Well, trim 'em, kid, trim 'em!"

"That's what I'm doing, Blainey, and the finest!"

She took his accents, almost the contemptuous abruptness of his gestures, transforming herself into his world.

"When are you going to get tired of all that?" he said, his eyes narrowing covetously. "It's a short game. This is longer, safer."

"When? Pretty soon, Blainey."

"Why not now?"

She shook her head, laughing.

"Too soon—too soon!"

He reached over into a drawer and drew out a play.

"Do you see this? I'm keeping this for you!"

She opened her eyes.

"For me?"

"There's a fortune in it. There's a scene there"—he swore appreciatively—"it's all in a scene, a trick; but it's a winner. And I'm holding that for you, kid."

"Star me?" she said, laughing incredulously.

"In the third year—yes!"

"Come, now, Blainey, I'm no fool. I'm not that strong on acting!"

"Acting be damned. Personality!" he said, slapping the table. "You've got me—you can get them!"

"Have I got you, Blainey?" she said, looking at him boldly.

"You got me from the first with your impudent way," he said abruptly. "I'm interested in you, kid—particularly interested! You understand what I mean?"

"It's not hard to understand you, T. B."

"I'll put you on Broadway in two years," he said. Then, bubbling over with enthusiasm, he took up the rÔle again. "God! there's a scene here that'll get 'em—won't be a dry handkerchief in the house!" He continued, his face lighting up with sentiment, for scenes of virtue triumphant, virtue resisting, virtue rewarded, genuinely moved him—on the stage: "End of second act, the girl learns she's an intruder—not Lady Marjorie, heiress to millions, but a waif, substituted, see? It's a lie, of course; all works out well in the last act; but you don't know that. She's got an exit there beats anything in Camill! Runs away, see? Leaves everything—jewels, clothes, money, nothing belongs to her.

"Proud—that's the idea; won't take a thing—nothing! Just as she's rushing out, sees a cat, a damned, bobtailed, battered old kitten she's picked off the streets, saved from a gang of ruffians in first act. That's hers; in that great gorgeous palace—think of it—all that is hers—all she's a right to. Runs back, grabs it, hugs it to her breast, and goes out! What a chance! There's millions in that cat! I saw it. The play was rotten, but the cat was there! That's the kind of stuff that gets over, chokes you up, blinds you! I know it—I'd risk a fortune on it!"

"Sounds good!" she said, nodding, amazed at this other side in him, not yet comprehending inconsistencies in human nature.

He was off in raptures again, insisting on reading the final pages. She listened without hearing, attracted and repulsed, turn about, by the man. When he had come to earth again, she said:

"Blainey, I'm going to send a girl around to you for that part you offered me."

"No, you're not! Work others," he said, with a snap. "Trim 'em, but don't work me! I don't go in for charity!"

"Who said anything about charity?" she answered, knowing the impracticability of such an appeal. "I'm sending you some one who can act—Winona Horning, and a beauty! She was going to take a part in one of Zeller's productions, and I told her to hold off until you saw her. She's a friend, and I don't want her to lose time with Zeller!"

"You won't take it yourself?"

"Not now! Besides, when I get ready, you're going to place me in a good stock company first. Look out, Blainey," she added, laughing; "if I turn serious, it'll be frightful!"

He began, delighted, to sketch for her the course she should take, seeking to convince her of her talents, unfolding to her the methods he would employ. She kept her eyes on his, but she did not hear a word. The feeling of the place possessed her; she could not shake it off. She felt already caught.

In reality, her reckless assumption of this part was simply a trying out of herself, an attempt to project herself into the future, to explore with the eye where the feet must tread. Not that a career was within her serious intentions. She retreated from coarseness, drawing her delicate skirts about her; yet it amused her thus to dramatize herself! So, while one Dodo was audaciously playing at acting, another Dodo was coldly placing questions before herself.

"Would it be possible? Could I ever? Would it be worth while? And Blainey—what would that mean?"

Then, as he turned in the glare from the window, she noticed his vest. It was a brown upholstered vest with purple sofa buttons. Her reverie centered on those buttons, counting them, running them up and down; and a curious idea came to her. If by any chance she should go on with a career, she certainly would have to make him change that vest!

The idea of a manager, a manager devoted to her, wearing a brown upholstered vest with purple sofa buttons, offended her horribly—more than other possibilities which did not stare her in the face. When she went off with Massingale, after the second act, for a hasty bite, he said to her:

"Why so solemn?"

She was still counting over that double line of purple sofa buttons.