he crossed the Circus again to his own pavement and gazed like
a stranger at his own posters. On several of them, encircled in a
scarlet ring, was the sole name of Rose Euclid--impressive! (And
smaller, but above it, the legend, "E.H. Machin, Sole Proprietor.")
He asked himself impartially, as his eyes uneasily left the poster
and slipped round the Circus--deserted save by a few sinister and
idle figures at that hour--"Should I have sent that interview to the
papers, or shouldn't I?... I wonder. I expect some folks would say
that on the whole I've been rather hard on Rose since I first met
her!... Anyhow, she's speaking up all right to-night!" He laughed
shortly.

A newsboy floated up from the Circus bearing a poster with the name of
Isabel Joy on it in large letters.

He thought:

"Be blowed to Isabel Joy!"

He did not care a fig for Isabel Joy's competition now.

And then a small door opened in the wall close by, and an elegant
cloaked woman came out on to the pavement. The door was the private
door leading to the private box of Lord Woldo, owner of the ground
upon which the Regent Theatre was built. The woman he recognized with
confusion as Elsie April, whom he had not seen alone since the Azure
Society's night.

"What are you doing out here, Mr. Machin?" she greeted him with
pleasant composure.

"I'm thinking," said he.

"It's going splendidly," she remarked. "Really!... I'm just running
round to the stage-door to meet dear Rose as she comes off. What a
delightful woman your wife is! So pretty, and so sensible!"

She disappeared round the corner before he could compose a suitable
husband's reply to this laudation of a wife.

Then the commissionaires at the entrance seemed to start into life.
And then suddenly several preoccupied men strode rapidly out of the
theatre, buttoning their coats, and vanished phantom-like....

Critics, on their way to destruction!

The performance must be finishing. Hastily he followed in the
direction taken by Elsie April.

V

He was in the wings, on the prompt side. Close by stood the prompter,
an untidy youth with imperfections of teeth, clutching hard at the
red-scored manuscript of "The Orient Pearl." Sundry players, of
varying stellar degrees, were posed around in the opulent costumes
designed by Saracen Givington, A.R.A. Miss Lindop was in the
background, ecstatically happy, her cheeks a race-course of tears.
Afar off, in the centre of the stage, alone, st