The Pulaskian., 1917-04-13
N THE I nrCTDnVTMH DEO l NO11NO II ANGEL H
 - By - HI
 LOUIS JOSEPH VANCE
CHAPTER xx-contInued.
o1-

sat on stone bench with her profile to the audience, her back to the right of the pr0scenium arch: so that she could not, without turning, have no- ticed the entrance of Ember and her husband. 4 shy, light, deathlessly youthful figure in pale and flowing garments that nodded themselves flu- ently to her sweet and girlish body, in q posture of pensive meditation: : she was nothing less than adorable. Whitaker could not take his eyes from her, for sheer wonder and delight.
 He was only vaguely conscious that Max, at length satisfied, parked word to that effect to an unseen electrician off to the left, and waving his hand with a gesture indelibly associated with his personality, dragged light icane-seated chair to the left of the proseenium and sat himself down.
 "All ready% he demanded in a sharp and irritable voice.
 The woman on the marble step nod Ided impereeptibly.
 "Go ahead" snapped the manager.
  paused and addressed the seated woman. His lines were brief. She lifted her head with a startled air, Listening. He ceased to speak, and her voice Of golden velvet filled the house with the flowing beauty of it's unforgettably sweet modulations. Be iyond the footlights handful of so- phisticated and skeptical habitues of the theater forgot for the moment their ingrained incredulity and thrilled lin sympathy with the wonderful rap lture of that voice of eternal Youth. Whitaker himself for the time forgot that he was the husband of this wom- an and her lover; she moved before his vision in the guise of some divine creature, divinely unattainable, dream woman divorced utterly from any semblance of reality.
 That opening scene was one perhaps unique in the history of the stage. Composed by Max in some mad. poet icaI moment of inspired plagiarism, it not only owned a poignant and en- thralling beauty of imagery, but 1t moved with an almost Grecian certi- tude. with a significance extraordina- lrily direct and devoid of circumlocu- tion, seeming to lay bare the living tissue of immortal drama.
 But with the appearance of other characters there came change: the rare atmosphere of the opening began lxn sI;ccfnofa Ynoroopf;EIv Fsbo oo+;ov1 clouded and grew vague. The auditors began to feel the futterings of uncer- tainty in the air. Something was fail- ing to cross the footlights. The sweep ing and assured gesture of the accom- plished playwright faltered: clumsy bit of construction was damningly ex- posed; faults of characterization null tiplied depressingly. Sara Law her self lost an indefinab1e proportion Of her rare and provoking charm; the strangeness of failing to hold her au- dience in an ineluctable grasp seemed at once to nettle and distress her. Max himself seemed suddenly to wake to the amazing fact that there was something enormously and irremedi- ablywrong; he began with exasperating frequency to halt the action, to inter rupt scenes with advice and demands for repetition, He found it impossible to be still, to keep his seat or control his rasping, irritable voice. Subordi- nate characters on the stage lost their heads and either forgot to act or 0veracted. And then-intolerable cli- max !-of a sudden somebody in the orchestra chairs laughed in outright derision in the middle of a passage meant to be tenderly emotional.
 The voice of Sara Law broke and fell. She stood trembling and un- strung. Max, without a word, turned on his heel and swung out Of sight into the wings. Four other actors on the stage, aside from Sara Law, hesitated and drew together in doubt and be- wilderment. And then, abruptly, with no warning whatever, the illusion of gloom in the auditorium and moonlight in the postscenium was rent away by the glare of the full complement of electric lights installed in the house.
 A thought later, while still all were blinking and gasping with surprise, Max strode into view just behind the footlights. Halting, he swept the ar ray of auditors with an ominous and truculent stare.
 So quickly was this startling change consummated that Whitaker had no more than time to realize the reap pearance of the manager before he caught his wrathful and venomous glance fixed to his own bewildered face. And something in the light that flickered wildly behind Max's eyes re- minded him so strongly of a similar expression he had remarked in the eyes of Drummond. the night the lat ter had been captured by Ember and Sum Eat, that in alarm he half rose from hts seat.
 Simultaneously he saw Max spring toward the box, with a distorted and snarling countenance. He was tug xt.