"For God's sake, Smitherton, what are you pulling all this tragedy stuff about? Ain't you her manager? Did you want the whole act queered? Wasn't the old woman nutty and the old man a bum, and weren't they dead-weight for her to carry? Didn't they have to die sometime—and could they ever have picked a luckier time to do it? I ask you now, could they?"
"Great God!" exclaimed the reporter. But the manager went on.
"I call it a miracle of luck. God's good to some folks! Here that girl gets all her troubles settled at a single stroke—and tomorrow she's the biggest headliner on Broadway ... and you, the feller that ought to be out hustling her business interests, stand there gaping like you was sore because she didn't fliver. I don't get you."
Mr. Lewis's voice was freighted with disgust, then, seeing that the climax had been reached on the stage, he turned away and signaled to ring down. "Take all the curtains you can get out of it," he instructed the stage-manager—as he once more rubbed his hands.
Smitherton stood silent, seeing the curtain descend, then rise and fall time after time to a thunder of applause. He saw Mary Burton, with all her distaste masked behind the regal tranquillity of her splendid eyes and her cruelly wasted courage, bowing, not like an actress, but like an empress. Then she passed them and closed the door of her dressing-room.
Smitherton heard Lewis' voice once more, accompanied by something like a sigh. "Now comes the tough part," said the manager. "I've got to go and break it to her. Of course, just at first she ain't likely to see the lucky side of it."
The reporter stopped him.
"To hell with you!" he cried out fiercely. "I'll tell her myself—and if you interrupt me or say a word to her—I'm going to hurt you."
He went slowly to the door, but the manager had followed him with some excitement, and with no realization that his voice was loud, as he prompted.
"Put it to her tactful. Remind her that she's made on Broadway, and, now that the old man and old woman are both dead, she's free."