“And a critic has a happy thought and five minutes to think it over, and writes something mean and cruel and facetious, and perhaps undoes a whole year’s work.  Is that right?”

“They ought to bar him from the theater,” declared one of the women in the cast.

“And what do you think of that?” inquired Marrineal, still addressing Banneker.

Banneker laughed.  “Admit only those who wear the bright and burnished badge of the Booster,” he said.  “Is that the idea?”

“Nobody objects to honest criticism,” began Betty Raleigh heatedly, and was interrupted by a mild but sardonic “Hear!  Hear!” from one of the magazine reviewers.

“Honest players don’t object to honest criticism, then,” she amended.  “It’s the unfairness that hurts.”

“All of which appears to be based on the assumption that it is impossible for Mr. Gurney honestly to have disliked Mr. Laurence’s play,” pointed out Banneker.  “Now, delightful as it seemed to me, I can conceive that to other minds—­”

“Of course he could honestly dislike it,” put in the playwright hastily.  “It isn’t that.”

“It’s the mean, slurring way he treated it,” said the star “Mr. Banneker, just what did he say to you about it?”

Swiftly there leapt to his recollection the critic’s words, at the close of the second act.  “It’s a relief to listen for once to comedy that is sincere and direct.” ...  Then why, why—­“He said that you were all that the play required and the play was all that you required,” he answered, which was also true, but another part of the truth.  He was not minded to betray his associate.

“He’s rotten,” murmured the manager, now busy on the margin of another paper.  “But I dunno as he’s any rottener than the rest.”

“On behalf of the profession of journalism, we thank you, Bezdek,” said one of the critics.

“Don’t mind old Bez,” put in the elderly first-nighter.  “He always says what he thinks he means, but he usually doesn’t mean it.”

“That is perhaps just as well,” said Banneker quite quietly, “if he means that The Ledger is not straight.”

“I didn’t say The Ledger.  I said Gurney.  He’s crooked as a corkscrew’s hole.”

There was a murmur of protest and apprehension, for this was going rather too far, which Banneker’s voice stilled.  “Just a minute.  By that you mean that he takes bribes?”

“Naw!” snorted Bezdek.

“That he’s influenced by favoritism, then?”

“I didn’t say so, did I?”

“You’ve said either too little or too much.”

“I can clear this up, I think,” proffered the elderly first-nighter, in his courteous voice.  “Mr. Gurney is perhaps more the writer than the critic.  He is carried away by the felicitous phrase.”

“He’d rather be funny than fair,” said Miss Raleigh bluntly.

“The curse of dramatic criticism,” murmured a magazine representative.