“Some people may like this!” he admitted, with a gleam of optimism.  Hitherto, for weeks past, he had gone forward with his preparations in the most frigid and convinced pessimism.  It seemed to him that he had become involved in a vast piece of machinery, and that nothing short of blowing the theatre up with dynamite would bring the cranks and pistons to a stop.  And yet it seemed to him also that everything was unreal, that the contracts he signed were unreal, and the proofs he passed, and the posters he saw on the walls of London, and the advertisements in the newspapers.  Only the cheques he drew had the air of being real.  And now, in a magic flash, after a few moments gazing at the stage, he saw all differently.  He scented triumph from afar off, as one sniffs the tang of the sea.  On the morrow he had to meet Nellie at Euston, and he had shrunk from meeting her, with her terrible remorseless, provincial, untheatrical common sense; but now, in another magic flash, he envisaged the meeting with a cock-a-doodle-doo of hope.  Strange!  He admitted it was strange.

And then he failed to hear several words spoken by Rose Euclid.  And then a few more.  As the emotion of the scene grew, the proportion of her words audible in the gallery diminished.  Until she became, for him, totally inarticulate, raving away there and struggling in a cocoon of hexameters.

Despair seized him.  His nervous system—­every separate nerve of it—­was on the rack once more.

He stood up in a sort of paroxysm, and called loudly across the vast intervening space: 

“Speak more distinctly, please.”

A fearful silence fell upon the whole theatre.  The rehearsal stopped.  The building itself seemed to be staggered.  Somebody had actually demanded that words should be uttered articulately!

Mr. Marrier turned towards the intruder, as one determined to put an end to such singularities.

“Who’s up theyah?”

“I am,” said Edward Henry.  “And I want it to be clearly understood in my theatre that the first thing an actor has to do is to make himself heard.  I daresay I’m devilish odd, but that’s how I look at it.”

“Whom do you mean, Mr. Machin?” asked Marrier in a different tone.

“I mean Miss Euclid of course.  Here I’ve spent heaven knows how much on the acoustics of this theatre, and I can’t make out a word she says.  I can hear all the others.  And this is the dress-rehearsal!”

“You must remember you’re in the gallery,” said Mr. Marrier, firmly.

“And what if I am?  I’m not giving gallery seats away to-morrow night.  It’s true I’m giving half the stalls away, but the gallery will be paid for.”

Another silence.

Said Rose Euclid, sharply, and Edward Henry caught every word with the most perfect distinctness: 

“I’m sick and tired of people saying they can’t make out what I say!  They actually write me letters about it!  Why should people make out what I say?”