"Yes, but the other half?"
"As long as you get there it's all right."
The cab stopped at the stage door of Crayford's opera house.
As they went in two or three journalists spoke to them, asking for information about the libretto. Claude hurried on as if he did not hear them. His usual almost eager amiability of manner with strangers had deserted him this evening. But Charmian and Alston Lake spoke to the pressmen, and Alston's whole-hearted laugh rang out. Claude heard it and envied Alston.
From a room on the right of the entrance a very dark young man came carrying some letters.
"More letters!" he said to Claude, with a smile.
"Oh, thank you."
"They're all on the stage. The locusts will be real fine when they fix them right. We have folks inquiring about them all the time. Nothing like that in the Sennier opera."
He smiled again with pleasant boyishness. Claude longed to take him by the shoulders and say to him:
"It isn't a swarm of locusts that will make an opera!" But he only nodded and remarked: