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influence with Dennis Hamilton. It's been over twenty years since I've seen him."
    "There's no reason you can't pick up where you left off. I hear he's very rich, so you'd have something in common already."
    Ann struggled to keep her anger under control. "I've never noticed you complaining about having too much money," she said dryly, and, she hoped, with a trace of humor. She hated to argue with Terri, because even if she was right, she never won. And since Eddie's death, arguing with Terri consisted of talking to her.
    " ' Visi d' arte ,' " Terri replied. "I live for art."
    "I know what it means, thank you."
    "But I also live to eat. Are we having dinner tonight?"
    "You'd better ask Mary that. She's in charge of the kitchen."
    "Mary's in charge of cuisine boring ," Terri said with a French accent with a sneer in it.
    "Does anything meet with your approval around here?" Ann finally asked. She knew that her irritation was precisely what Terri had hoped to draw out, but she couldn't help herself.
    "No, not really. Everything seems weary, stale, flat . . .”
    “. . . and unprofitable," Ann finished for her. "I'm not totally illiterate."
    "Oh, brav - o ," Terri said, getting up and walking to the door. "I'll see you over chow."
    What a little bitch , Ann thought as she watched the girl walk out the door. How had Terri turned out like that? What had she or Eddie done wrong? Too much money? Too many privileges? Terri had never had to do an honest day's labor in her life. She had never waited on tables, never washed dishes for money, never peddled anything door to door, had never done any of the hundreds of thankless tasks that kids did growing up that earned them a little money and a lot of humility.
    Being a waitress during her college summers had been, Ann thought in retrospect, one of her best learning experiences. She had moaned about it continually at first, because there was no need. Her grandfather, the president of a bank, was paying her tuition, and her father, a doctor, could more than afford her room, board, and expenses. But he had insisted, over the protests of Ann's mother, that she work during the summers. "It might be the only physical labor the girl ever does in her life," he had said.
    "Oh, John," her mother had argued, "it's just not necessary. Look at me — I've never worked like that."
    "I know," her father replied. "And that's exactly why Ann should." Ann hadn't laughed at the comment then, but did later, many times.
    Her father had been right, as usual. Though she had hated that Holiday Inn coffee shop the first few days, she grew to like the job in a grudging way. There was only one other college girl working there, an art major from Penn State who needed the money badly. Of the other women, a few were older married types who wanted the additional luxuries two incomes would provide, while the rest were single girls, most of them high school dropouts. It was a good cross section, and Ann, unfailingly pleasant and a little afraid, got along well with all of them.
    The other thing that waiting on tables had done for her was introduce her to Dennis Hamilton, who, with the rest of the company of A Private Empire , was staying at the Holiday Inn in Kirkland, Pennsylvania, and would be opening the fledgling production in Kirkland's Venetian Theatre.

Scene 2

    The original intention of the producers was to take the show to New Haven, Connecticut for its out-of-town tryout, but no theatre was available at the time. Philadelphia's Walnut Street Theatre, which housed its share of hopefuls, was also booked. But then one of the producers remembered the Venetian Theatre in Kirkland. It had been the home of many touring shows after the death of Vaudeville, but had for some years been only a movie theatre, its former glories masked by dust. Still, it had the necessary facilities, and was close enough to Philadelphia to insure decent audiences, particularly for a new Ensley-Davis show, the same team that had brought the