Page:O'Higgins--From the life.djvu/91

 "That finishes it," the author groaned in my ear. "He'll never play it again. Never."

The last act was entirely hers. The star sulked his way through it, saying mere words.

The author left me. I supposed he had gone to throw himself in the surf.

The audience crowded out, saying: "Who is she? Isn't she wonderful? ... Charming! Such grace! ... Well, she certainly takes that part off fine."

Out of a spirit of sympathy for the author, I went back to the hotel and to bed without joining in the post-mortem. I had felt all along that the play was a conglomeration of fatuous nonsense, anyway. One always feels that way about a friend's play. And next morning I found that—as usual—while I slept all the really important things of life had happened. The others had been up all night. The star had left for Florida, with an incipient attack of press-agent's pneumonia, having broken his contract, abandoned his interest in the production, insulted Jane Shore, and had his other eye blacked by a little property-man named Fritz Hoff who hated him. An unexpected millionaire had "bought in" on the play, and this was the same millionaire who had been guilty of the barrelful of American Beauty roses across the footlights. "Tom the Gum-man" we came to call him. The author was busy rewriting again in order to make a star