His voice broke. He seemed about to burst into tears. I caught Gibson's arm.
"Oh, Billy," I gulped, "how did he look?"
Gibson patted my hand glancing away from me as he answered.
"Very quiet," he said. "He's unconscious. The nurse said he was 'resting comfortably.' That's their pet formula, you know. Occasionally he mutters something--a few disconnected words. By Jove, what _is_ that fellow doing now?"
I followed the direction of his eyes. "T. B." had taken one of his flying leaps over the footlights, assisted midway by a chair in the aisle which served the purpose of a spring-board in this acrobatic feat. Now he was at the right first entrance, swaggering through the open door, his hands deep in his pockets, every tooth in his head revealed in a fixed and awful grin. Yet, strangely, through the swagger, under the grin, one detected for an instant something resembling a well-bred college boy entering a drawing-room--something, too, of radiant youth, irresponsible and charming.
"Jove," breathed Gibson, "he gets it, somehow, doesn't he? One sees exactly what he's driving at."
But the little scene had faded as I looked at it, like a negative dimming in the light. The door that opened was the door of the sick-room, and the man who had entered was one of the specialists who watched over Godfrey to-night. I saw him approach the bed and lean over the patient, looking at him in silence for a moment, his finger on the pulse of the thin hand that lay so still. Somewhere near a woman was sobbing. Was it Mrs. Morris, or the young girl in the wings? I did not know. "T. B.'s" voice was cutting its way to me like the blast of a steam siren through a fog.
"Miss Iverson," he yelled. "Cut out that kid's love scene. He can't do it, and no one wants it there, anyway. You've got some drama here now, and, by Heaven, it's about time you had! Don't throw it away. Keep to it." His voice broke on the last words. Again he seemed to be on the verge of tears. "_Keep--to--it_," he almost sobbed.
I carried my manuscript to a point in the wings where, vaguely aided by one electric light hanging far above me, I could make the changes for which "T. B." had asked. They meant new cues for several characters and a number of verbal alterations in their lines. Far down within me something sighed over the loss of that love scene--sighed, and then moaned over the loss of something else. "T. B.," his chin on his chest, his eyes on the floor, brooded somberly in an orchestra seat until we were ready to go over the revised scene. As I finished, Stella Merrick leaned over me, her hand clutching my left shoulder in a grip that hurt. Her teeth were chattering with nervousness.