“Come, now!  Don’t make a scene.  We’ll see the show all right!”

“Sure we’ll see the show!” he returned contentiously.  “Where’s the manager?”

A smug mannikin whose uniform was a dress suit, the business manager himself, eyed him in no friendly spirit from a nearby corner.

“This is Mr. L——­,” one of the satellites now approached and explained to the manager.  “He’s connected with M——­’s Magazine.  He does short stories and dramatics occasionally.”

The manager bowed.  After all, M——­’s Magazine had come to have some significance on Broadway.  It was as well to be civil.  Courtesy was extended for three, and they went in.

As for myself, I resented the mood and the change.  It was in no way my affair—­his life was his own—­and still I resented it.  I did not believe that he was as bad as he seemed.  He had too much genuine sense.  It was just boyish swagger and show, and still it was time that he was getting over that and settling down.  I really hoped that time would modify all this.

One thing that made me hope for the best was that very shortly after this M——­’s Magazine blew completely up, leaving him without that semi-financial protection which I felt was doing him so much harm.  The next favorable sign that I observed was that a small volume of short stories, some sixteen in number, and containing the cream of his work up to that time, was brought to a publishing house with which I was financially identified at the time, and although no word was said to me (I really think he took great care not to see me), still it was left and on my advice eventually published (it sold, I believe, a little under five hundred copies).  But the thing that cheered me was that it contained not one story which could be looked upon as a compromise with his first views.  And better, it had been brought to the concern with which I was connected—­intentionally, I am sure.  I was glad to have had a hand in its publication.  “At least,” I said, “he has not lost sight of his first ideal.  He may go on now.”

And thereafter, in one magazine and another, excellent enough to have but a small circulation, I saw something of his which had genuine merit.  A Western critical journal began to publish a series of essays by him, for which I am sure he received nothing at all.  Again, three or four years later, a second volume of stories, almost if not quite as good as his first, was issued by this same Western paper.  He was trying to do serious work; but he still sought and apparently craved those grand scenes on the farm or in some New York restaurant or an expensive apartment, and when he could no longer afford it.  He still wrote happy-ending, or compromise, stories for any such magazine as would receive him, and was apparently building up a reasonably secure market for them.  In the meantime the moving-picture scenario market had developed, and he wrote for it.  His eyes were also turning toward the stage, as one completed