Mrs. Harter by E.M. Delafield

When the day preceding that of the show arrived, we had all reached the stage of believing, with entire conviction, that nothing else in the world mattered but a successful performance. It is this temporary but complete absence of sense of proportion that puts life into almost any undertaking, but more especially into one about which a number of people are engaged.

On the morning of that day Bill tried to hold a final rehearsal, at which half of the performers failed to appear, because they were frantically and irrationally mislaying vital pieces of property in different parts of the house or dashing off in search of substitutes for other equally vital pieces of property, alleged by them to have been mislaid by other members of the cast.