w," said Mr. Seven Sachs, calmly. "I know I've played
it myself fifteen hundred and two times, and that's saying nothing of
my three subsidiary companies on the road."

"What _is_ Mr. Sachs's play?" asked Carlo Trent, fretfully.

"Don't you know, Carlo?" Rose Euclid patted him. "'Overheard.'"

"Oh! I've never seen it."

"But it was on all the hoardings!"

"I never read the hoardings," said Carlo. "Is it in verse?"

"No, it isn't," Mr. Seven Sachs briefly responded. "But I've made over
six hundred thousand dollars out of it."

"Then of course it's intellectual!" asserted Mr. Marrier, positively.
"That proves it. I'm very sorry I've not seen it either; but it must
be intellectual. The day of the unintellectual drahma is over. The
people won't have it. We must have faith in the people, and we can't
show our faith better than by calling our theatre by its proper
name--'The Intellectual Theatre'!"

("_His_ theatre!" thought Edward Henry. "What's he got to do with
it?")

"I don't know that I'm so much in love with your 'Intellectual,'"
muttered Carlo Trent.

"_Aren't_ you?" protested Rose Euclid, shocked.

"Of course I'm not," said Carlo. "I told you before, and I tell
you now, that there's only one name for the theatre--'The Muses'
Theatre!'"

"Perhaps you're right!" Rose agreed, as if a swift revelation had come
to her. "Yes, you're right."

("She'll make a cheerful sort of partner for a fellow," thought Edward
Henry, "if she's in the habit of changing her mind like that every
thirty seconds." His appetite had gone. He could only drink.)

"Naturally, I'm right! Aren't we going to open with my play, and isn't
my play in verse?... I'm sure you'll agree with me, Mr. Machin, that
there is no real drama except the poetical drama."

Edward Henry was entirely at a loss. Indeed, he was drowning in his
dressing-gown, so favourable to the composition of hexameters.

"Poetry ..." he vaguely breathed.

"Yes, sir," said Carlo Trent. "Poetry."

"I've never read any poetry in my life," said Edward Henry, like a
desperate criminal. "Not a line."

Whereupon Carlo Trent rose up from his seat, and his eyeglasses
dangled in front of him.

"Mr. Machin," said he with the utmost benevolence. "This is the most
interesting thing I've ever come across. Do you know, you're precisely
the man I've always been wanting to meet?... The virgin mind. The
clean slate.... Do you know, you're precisely the man that it's my
ambition t