. To have made so great a position and to have nothing to offer
you that you will accept.'

'Not even a rise in salary,' said Clara, a little maliciously, and she
so hurt him that he collapsed in his attempt at heroics, and to win her
at all costs said,--

'Yes, yes. I will do _The Tempest_. I can make Prospero a great part.
I will do _The Tempest_ if you will be Miranda; at least if you will be
nothing else you shall be a daughter to me.'

'You had better ask Charles and Verschoyle to supper,' said Clara.
'And we can all talk it over. But I won't have Mr Gillies.'

'Ah! How Teresa hated that man.... Do you know that I sometimes think
he has undone all the great work she did for me.'

Clara had no mind to discuss Mr Gillies. She had gained her point.
She felt certain that a combination of Butcher, Charles, and Verschoyle
was the most promising for her purpose.

'I hate Mann,' said Sir Henry. 'I hate him. He is a renegade. He
loathes his own calling. He has turned his back on it....'

'When you know him you will love him.'

Sir Henry swung round and fixed his eyes on her.

'I live in dread,' he said, 'in dread for you. You have everything
before you, everything, and then one day you will fall in love and your
genius will be laid at the feet of some fool who will trample it under
foot as a cow treads on a beautiful buttercup.'

Clara smiled. Sir Henry, from excessive familiarity with noble words,
could never find the exact phrase.

The supper was arranged in the aquarium, which in Clara's honour was
filled with banked up flowers, lilies, roses, delphiniums, and
Canterbury bells.... Clara wore gray and green, and gray shoes with
cross-straps about her exquisite ankles. She came with Verschoyle, who
brought her in his car which he had placed at her disposal. Sir Henry
was in a velvet evening suit of snuff colour, and he glared jealously
at his lordship whom he regarded as an intending destroyer of Clara's
reputation.

'I'm glad you're going to give Mann his chance,' said Verschoyle.
'Extraordinary fellow, most extraordinary.... Pity his life should be
wasted, especially now that we are beginning to wake up to the
importance of the theatre.'

Sir Henry winced.

'There _are_ men,' he said, 'who have worked while others talked. Take
this man Shaw, for instance. He talked for years. Then he comes out
with plays which are all talk.'

'Ibsen,' said Verschoyle.

'Why should we on the Engl