FROM THE LIFE
betray them to the police. Great idea! It was acted upon at once.
By this time the meaning of the play had been cheerfully obliterated. The curtains had all been changed. The characterization of the hero was a crazy-quilt. And the author was anxiously trying to add explanatory lines to account for actions that the recording angel himself could not have audited correctly.
"That's all right," the star would say. "Don't worry about that. They won't think of it till they leave the theater."
To do the author justice, he was not greatly worried by what was going on. Above all else, he wished his play to succeed; and these expert emendations were designed solely to achieve success. The producer seemed equally satisfied; he had seen such things done before; it was the way in which successes were written. And the actors, accustomed to the divine right and ruling egotism of stars, accepted their losses and their gains—as the alterations either reduced or fattened their parts—with Christian humility and resignation when they stood in the eye of authority, and with a fierce contempt and jealousy between themselves.
5
Throughout it all Jane Shore was wonderful. Whatever folly the star did, whatever absurdity he said, she watched him and listened to him with a
[ 58 ]
