e scenery door was flung open, and Mr Smithson arrived with a
small army of men, who dumped paint-pots on the boards, threw hammers
down, and rushed across the stage with flats and fly-cloths. Yet, in
spite of all these accidents introducing the spirit of burlesque, the
play survived. Sir Henry would tolerate interruptions up to a point,
but, when a charwoman in the auditorium started brushing or turned on a
sudden light, he would turn and roar into the darkness,--

'Stop that din! How can I rehearse if I am continually distracted! Go
away and clean somewhere else! We can't be clean now.... Please go
on.'

The cast was a good one of very distinguished and highly paid players,
all the principals being ladies and gentlemen who would rather not work
than accept less than twenty or twenty-five pounds a week. One or two
were superior young people who affected to despise the Imperium, but
confessed with a smile that the money was very useful. They were also
rather scornful of Charles because he was not intellectual.

Charles at first attended rehearsals and attempted to interfere, but
was publicly rebuked and told to mind his own business. There would
have been a furious quarrel, but Clara went up to him and dragged him
away just in time. He stayed away for some days, but returned and sat
gloomily in the auditorium. He had moved from his furnished house, and
was in rooms above a ham and beef shop, which, he said, had the
advantage of being warm.

'It isn't a production,' he grumbled, 'it's a scramble. He's ruining
the whole thing with his acting, which is mid-Victorian. He should key
the whole thing up from you, chicken.... You know what I want. You
understand me. The technique of the rest is all wrong. It is a
technique to divert attention from the scenery, raw, unmitigated
barn-storming.... Do, do ask him to let me help! What can he do,
popping in and out of the play and discussing a hundred and one things
with all these fools who keep running in?'

'You should have stipulated for it in your contract,' she said. 'It is
too late now. He does know his business, Charles, if only people would
leave him alone.'

So rehearsals went on for a few more days. Clara was more and more
absorbed. The magical reality of Ariel surpassed everything else in
her life except the memory of Rodd in his empty room, and that also she
wished to obliterate, for she was full of a premonition of danger, and
was convinced