hink you're splendid," he exclaimed.

"Now please!" she protested. "Don't begin in that strain. I know I'm
very good for an amateur--"

"But really! I'm not joking."

She shook her head.

"What do you think of my part for Rose? Wouldn't she be tremendous in
it? Wouldn't she be tremendous?... What a chance!"

He was acutely uncomfortable, but even his discomfort was somehow a
joy.

"Yes," he admitted. "Yes."

"Oh! Here's Carlo Trent," said she.

He heard Trent's triumphant voice, carrying the end of a conversation
into the room: "If he hadn't been going away," Carlo Trent was saying,
"Pilgrim would have taken it. Pilgrim--"

The poet's eyes met Edward Henry's, and the sentence was never
finished.

"How d'ye do, Machin?" murmured the poet.

Then a bell began to ring and would not stop.

"You're staying for the reception afterwards?" said Elsie April as the
room emptied.

"Is there one?"

"Of course."

It seemed to Edward Henry that they exchanged silent messages.

V

Some time after the last hexameter had rolled forth, and the curtain
had finally fallen on the immense and rapturous success of Carlo
Trent's play in three acts and in verse, Edward Henry, walking about
the crowded stage, where the reception was being held, encountered
Elsie April, who was still in her gorgeous dress of green and silver.
She was chatting with Marrier, who instantly left her, thus displaying
a discretion such as an employer would naturally expect from a
factotum to whom he was paying three pounds a week.

Edward Henry's heart began to beat in a manner which troubled him
and made him wonder what could be happening at the back of the
soft-frilled shirt front that he had obtained in imitation of Mr.
Seven Sachs.

"Not much elbow-room here!" he said lightly. He was very anxious to be
equal to the occasion.

She gazed at him under her emphasized eyebrows. He noticed that there
were little touches of red on her delightful nostrils.

"No," she answered with direct simplicity. "Suppose we try somewhere
else?"

She turned her back on all the amiable and intellectual babble,
descended three steps on the prompt side, and opened a door. The swish
of her brocaded spreading skirt was loud and sensuous. He followed her
into an obscure chamber in which several figures were moving to and
fro and talking.

"What's this place?" he asked. Involuntarily his voice was diminished
to a whisper.

"It's one of the discussion-ro