you are too occupied with your play. I don't know, though; you might be in
love, but I don't think that many women would be in love with you.... You
are too good a man, and women don't like good men.'

Hubert laughed, and without a trace of offended vanity in his voice he
said, 'I don't profess to be much of a lady-killer.'

'You don't know what I mean,' she said, looking at him fixedly, a maze of
half-childish, half-artistic curiosity in her handsome eyes.

Perplexed in his shy, straightford nature, Hubert inquired if she took
sugar in her tea. She said she did; stretched her feet to the fire, and
lapsed into dream. She was one of the enigmas of Stageland. She supported
herself, and went about by herself, looking a poor, lost little thing. She
spoke with considerable freedom of language on all subjects, but no one had
been able to fix a lover upon her.

'What a part Lady Hayward is! But tell me,--I don't quite catch your
meaning in the second act. Is this it?' and starting to her feet, she
became in a moment another being. With a gesture, a look, an intonation,
she was the woman of the play,--a woman taken by an instinct, long
submerged, but which has floated to the surface, and is beginning to
command her actions. In another moment she had slipped back into her weary
lymphatic nature, at once prematurely old and extravagantly childish. She
could not talk of indifferent things; and having asked some strange
questions, and laughed loudly, she wished Hubert 'Good-afternoon' in her
curious, irresponsible fashion, taking her leave abruptly.

The next two days Hubert devoted entirely to his play. There were things in
it which he knew were good, but it was incomplete. Montague Ford would not
produce it in its present form. He must put his shoulder to the wheel and
get it right; one more push, that was all that was wanted. And he could be
heard walking to and fro, up and down, along and across his tiny
sitting-room, stopping suddenly to take a note of an idea that had occurred
to him.

One day he went to Hampstead Heath. A long walk, he thought, would clear
his mind, and he returned home thinking of his play. The sunset still
glittering in the skies; the bare trees were beautifully distinct on the
blue background of the suburban street, and at the end of the long
perspective, a 'bus and a hansom could be seen coming towards him. As they
grew larger, his thoughts defined themselves, and the distressing problem
of his four