" It
struck him as brilliantly clever, and he asked himself whether that
perhaps were not rather the sort of thing he ought to have taken up:
not the statesmanship, but the art of brief biography. Suddenly he
became aware that he must hurry if he was to reach the theatre at
all--it was a quarter to eleven o'clock. He scrambled out and, this
time, found a hansom--he had lately spent enough money in cabs to add
to his hope that the profits of his new profession would be great.
His anxiety, his suspense flamed up again, and as he rattled
eastward--he went fast now--he was almost sick with alternations. As
he passed into the theatre the first man--some underling--who met
him, cried to him, breathlessly:
"You're wanted, sir--you're wanted!" He thought his tone very
ominous--he devoured the man's eyes with his own, for a betrayal:
did he mean that he was wanted for execution? Some one else pressed
him, almost pushed him, forward; he was already on the stage. Then
he became conscious of a sound more or less continuous, but seemingly
faint and far, which he took at first for the voice of the actors
heard through their canvas walls, the beautiful built-in room of the
last act.
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