'My throat felt like a rusty gun-barrel.' 'Fright is very bad for the voice,' Schreiermeyer remarked, as the call-boy handed him another bottle of beer through the open door.
Stromboli took no notice of the direct imputation.

He had taken a very small and fine handkerchief from his sporran and was carefully tucking it into his collar with some idea of protecting his throat.

When this was done his admiration for his colleague broke out again without the slightest warning.
'You were superb, magnificent, surpassing!' he cried.
He seized Cordova's chalked hands, pressed them to his own whitened chin, by sheer force of stage habit, because the red on his lips would have come off on them, and turned away.
'Surpassing! Magnificent! What a woman!' he roared in tremendous tones as he strode away through the dim corridor towards the stage and his own dressing-room on the other side.
Meanwhile Schreiermeyer, who was quite as thirsty as the tenor, drank what the latter had left in the only glass there was, and set the full bottle beside the latter on the deal table.
'There is your beer,' he said, calling attention to what he had done.
Cordova nodded carelessly and sat down on one of the crazy chairs before the toilet-table.

Her maid at once came forward and took off her wig, and her own beautiful brown hair appeared, pressed and matted close to her head in a rather disorderly coil.
'You must be tired,' said the manager, with more consideration than he often showed to any one whose next engagement was already signed.
'I'll find out how many were killed in the explosion and then I'll get hold of the reporters.

You'll have two columns and a picture to-morrow.' Schreiermeyer rarely took the trouble to say good-morning or good-night, and Cordova heard the door shut after him as he went out.
'Lock it,' she said to her maid.