The next morning Pennock did not call Sheila till the last moment. Then her breakfast was on the table and her bath in the tub. The old dragon had again forbidden the   
telephone operator to ring the bell, and the bell-boys that came to the door with messages from Bret she shooed away.
 
Sheila found on her breakfast-tray a small stack of notes from Bret. They ranged from incredulous amazement at her neglect to towering rage.
 
Sheila was still new enough to wedlock to feel sorrier for him than for herself. She had a dim feeling that Bret had in him the makings of a very difficult specimen of 
 
that most difficult class, the prima donna’s husband. But she blamed her profession and hated the theater and Reben for tormenting her poor, patient, devoted, long-
 
suffering lover.
 
Yet as the soldier bridegroom, however he hates the war, obeys his captain none the less, so Sheila never dreamed of mutiny. She was an actor’s daughter and no 
 
treachery could be worse than to desert a manager, a company, and a work of art at the crisis of the whole investment. She regretted that she was not even giving her 
 
whole mind and ambition to her work. But how could she with her husband in such a plight?
 
She wrote Bret a little note of mad regret, abject apology, and insane devotion, and asked Pennock to get it to him at once.
 
Pennock growled: “You better give that young man to me. You’ll never have time to see him. And his jealousy is simply dretful.”
 
At the theater Sheila met Reben in a morning-after mood. He had had little sleep and he was sure that the play was hopeless. The only thing that could have cured him 
 
would have been a line of people at the box-office. The lobby was empty, and few spaces can look quite so empty as a theater lobby. The box-office man spoke to him, 
 
too, with a familiarity based undoubtedly on the notices.
 
One of the papers published a fulsome eulogy that Starr Coleman would not have dared to submit. Of the opposite tenor was the slashing abuse of a more important paper 
 
that nursed one of those critics of which each town has at least a single specimen—the local Archilochus whose similar ambition seems to be to drive the objects of 
 
his satire to suicide.
 
His chief support is his knowledge that his readers enjoy his vigor in pelting transient actors as a small boy throws rocks at express trains. His highest reward is 
 
the town boast, “We got a critic can roast an actor as good as anybuddy in N’York, and ain’t afraid to do it, either.”
 
As children these humorists first show their genius by placing bent pins on chairs; later they pull the chairs from under old ladies and start baby-carriages on a 
 
downward path. Every day is April fool to them.
 
Reben was always arguing that critics had nothing to do with success or failure and always ready to document his argument, and always trembled before them, none the 
 
less. It is small wonder that critics learn to secrete vitriol, since their praise makes so little effect and only their acid etches.
 
Reben had tossed aside the paper that praised his company and his play, but he clipped the hostile articles. The play-roaster began, as usual, with a pun on the title, 
 
“The Woman Pays but the audience won’t.”
 
As a matter of fact, Reben was about convinced that the play was a failure. It had succeeded in France because it was written for the French. The process of adaptation 
 
had taken away its Gallic brilliance without adding any Anglo-Saxon trickery. Reben would make a fight for it, before he gave up, but he had a cold, dismal intuition 
 
which he summed up to Batterson in that simple fatal phrase:
 
“It won’t do.”
 
He did not tell Sheila so, lest he hurt her work, but he told Prior that the play was deficient in viscera—only he used the grand old Anglo-Saxon phrasing.
 
He gave Prior some ideas for the visceration of the play and set him to work on a radical reconstruction, chiefly involving a powerful injection of heart-interest. 
 
Till this was ready there was no use meddling with details.
 
When Sheila reached the theater the rehearsal was brief and perfunctory. Reben explained the situation, and told her to take a good rest and give a performance at 
 
night. He had only one suggestion:
 
“Put more pep in the love-scenes and restore the clutch at the last curtain.”
 
Sheila gasped, “But I thought it was so much more artistic the way we played it last night.”
 
Reben laughed: “Ah, behave! When the curtain fell last night the thud could be heard a mile. The people thought it fell by accident. If the box-office hadn’t been 
 
closed they’d have hollered for their money back. You jump into Eldon’s arms to-night and hug as hard as you can. The same to you, Eldon. It’s youth and love they 
 
come to see, not artistic omissions.”
 
Sheila felt grave misgivings as to the effect of the restoration on her own arch-critic and private audience. But she rejoiced at being granted a holiday. She 
 
telephoned to Bret from a drug-store.
 
“I’ve got a day off, honey. Isn’t it gee-lo-rious!”
 
Then she sped to him as fast as a taxicab could take her. He had an avalanche of grievances waiting for her, but the sight of h............