s and throw it into his soup. "You probably want some fresh air.
You've been living in the theatre too much, you've forgotten what real
people are like. If you brought that play down and read it to the
company----"

His aposiopesis suggested that there would be uproar and danger to life.

"What had I better do?" Eric asked weakly.

"Frankly? Well, scrap your 'Singing Bird' and throw your pen behind the
fire. Don't try to write for six months. After that, anything you like
to send me . . . I hope you can eat this, by the way?"

Eric found that a sole, half-hidden by mussels, had been placed before
him. Manders had taken trouble about the luncheon; he was a good fellow
and had tried to soften the blow; throughout the time that they had
worked together he had been patient and very human; he was trying to
part now on a pleasant note. "Anything you like to send me . . ." It
would certainly be read; for a time he would read it himself--the next
three failures, say. And then . . . Eric wondered whether he would be
able to go back to journalism. The two successful plays would keep him
from starving, but he must make a livelihood again . . . and count every
shilling before he spent it. The flat must go. . . .

The long triumphal progress which he had enjoyed and disdained rose up
in accusing mockery. Here, then, was the end of that life-long dream of
domination. For a time Lady Poynter would invite him to her house and
ask when the next play was coming out, but her nature and the
requirements of her sham-intellectual life demanded that she should drop
him when he no longer had any tricks to display. Young Forbes Standish
or Carlton Haig--"most promising young playwrights"--would take his
place. Perhaps some one like George Oakleigh, who liked him personally,
would ask what had become of him; and Lady Poynter would answer easily:
"I haven't seen him for a long time. I must find out whether he's in
London and get him to lunch one day." And then young Forbes Standish
would begin to criticize "The Bomb-Shell" or the "Divorce" with bland
patronage. And every one at the Thespian would be tactful and
considerate.

"I feel as if I should never be able to write anything again," Eric
sighed. "This is the second--facer I've had. There was a novel I
started. . . . I'm used up, Manders."

"Take a holiday and don't talk rot!"

Conversation languished through the rest of the meal, and Eric hurried
back to his office, pretending that h