le, 'but it hurts me to
hear you speak of yourself as a woman. You are only a child and I hate
women.'

'So do I,' said Clara, all her anxiety now allayed. With Verschoyle
for her friend she did not care how soon the committee was dissolved.
She had always hated the committee, for, as her grandfather used to
say, a committee is a device by which the incompetent check the
activities of the competent.... She liked Verschoyle. He was a lonely
little man and she thought whimsically that only lonely people could
swallow the birds and fishes which are so necessary as the finishing
touch to the artist's vision.

'I must be going now,' she said to her companion's surprise.

'Can't I take you in my car?' he asked, concealing his astonishment at
her speaking of a home elsewhere. She consented, and he took her back
to her rooms, leaving Charles and the Irish poet still rhapsodising in
a somewhat discordant duet.

VII

SUPPER

Idealists must certainly be added to the drunkards and children over
whom a specially benign deity watches: a flood of disaster by sea and
land gave a plentiful crop of news and made it impossible for the
papers to publish Charles Mann's scheme. His committee's dread of
being made publicly ridiculous evaporated, and, as Lord Verschoyle did
not resign, no other member did, and Griffenberg simply sent in a
letter of protest and announced that he was too busy to take any more
active part in the proceedings. He went away and denounced the theatre
as a vulgar institution, which no artist could enter without losing his
soul. He said this publicly in a newspaper and produced one of those
delightful controversies which in the once happy days of unlimited
advertisement provided an opportunity for mutual recrimination upon an
impersonal basis.

Verschoyle promised Charles thirty thousand pounds if he could raise
another similar amount, and Charles regarded himself as worth thirty
thousand already, raised Mr Clott's salary, and condescended with so
much security to begin really to work at _The Tempest_.

Clara, who was still playing small parts at the Imperium, found to her
dismay that Sir Henry had rather cooled towards the Mann production and
was talking of other plays, a huge American success called _The Great
Beyond_, and a French drama of which he had acquired the rights some
few years previously. This was really alarming, for she knew that if
she could not engage Charles speedily he would